Madrigal dei Traditori
by Nancy Brown
Summary: Putting one's thumb on the scale of history is generally considered a bad idea. Rabbit Hole AU.
1. Everything Begins Somewhere

**Title:** Madrigal dei Traditori (1/10)  
**Author:** **nancybrown**  
**Rating:** R  
**Characters/Pairings:** Jack/Ianto/Lisa (implied past Jack/everyone), Tony Tyler, Mickey/Tosh, Gwen/Rhys, OCs (full New Whoniverse cast cameos)  
**Warnings:** violence, non-explicit sex, dodgy understanding of UNIT hierarchy, angst, fluff, OC overload, chapteritis, alcohol  
**Words:** 50,000 (4,000 this section)  
**Beta/Britpick:** **golden_d** and **temporal_witch** audienced this initially, while **fide_et_spe** and **51stcenturyfox** kicked it into shape. Thanks go out to all, and any mistakes still here are mine mine mine. :D  
**Spoilers:** up through CoE, one small spoiler for EoT Pt 2.  
**Summary:** Putting one's thumb on the scale of history is generally considered a bad idea.  
**A/N:** Part of the Rabbit Hole AU. For those who came in late, Jack is the only one who remembers events exactly as they occurred in canon. Since finding himself in this altered universe, he has formed a stable relationship with Ianto and Lisa; together, they chase aliens and raise kids.  
**A/N 2:** I'm going to post 2-3 chapters per day over four days. This is to save your eyeballs and my sanity.

* * *

**Chapter 1: Everything Begins Somewhere, And Most Things Have Multiple Beginnings.**

* * *

For Jack, everything started with a class at the Academy that he nearly failed because of a girl with skin like honey and eyes like emeralds. By the end of the class, he was seeing a boy with skin like toast and eyes like clouds, and he had to memorise three hundred dates and their significance in less than two days. When any one of those dates became significant to Jack in ways he could not have imagined back then -- writing them out in liquid chocolate on the broad expanse of his boyfriend's back and committing each to memory with his fingers and tongue -- he always paused and went faraway for a moment, caught in a flash of salt and sweet and innocence long lost.

* * *

For Ianto and Lisa, it all started with a late night, Jack nestled between them like a swaddled child. "Let's play a game," he said in his lazy drawl.

"I need a few minutes to recover," said Ianto, as Lisa said, "Still a bit sore from the last one."

Jack's laugh was warm but quiet enough not to wake the children down the hallway. Isabelle was starting grammar school tomorrow, and it was a night to celebrate and also, a little, to mourn. "Different kind of game. Something we used to play back at the Agency. It's a mental exercise. Would you step in front of the bullet for Archduke Ferdinand?"

He was greeted with silence. He hadn't expected Lisa to be the first to say, "Yes."

* * *

For Kyle, everything began with the night Uncle Jack made Mum cry. His parents rarely argued, other than the usual spats about who was supposed to wipe their feet before coming inside, and who left the milk out. What they had was unusual and fragile, and at nine, Kyle already knew how to keep secrets and deflect questions. While some of his schoolmates had two dads, none of them had both living with their mum, and anyway, Torchwood made secrets of everything. His parents didn't fight because they couldn't afford to fight, not without losing all they'd fought so hard to build.

But Kyle woke up one night with an urge to pee and a thirsty mouth afterwards, so he caught the tones if not the actual words as he lurked, frightened, upstairs. Mum cried, and Uncle Jack was, not hard, but … Implacable. That was a word on his spelling test last week, and he rolled it around in his head like an ice cube. Dad's voice was calmer, the steady breeze between them, and Mum eventually stilled.

Kyle never forgot this.

* * *

For Tony, everything started with a photograph, but if anyone asked, he said it began with a call from Cardiff. The area had always been unstable, and John said in the other world, the Doctor's world, there had been an actual Rift in space-time rather than the mere echo of one that threatened to break through here from time to time. In the other world, the Torchwood team assigned to the spot had more to do than just perform backup tasks and basic grunt work. When John was in trouble for something, Rose liked to wax reminiscent about the two men they once knew who worked there. In this universe, the Cardiff location was often left unmonitored, and had been abandoned for years.

The new activity they'd spotted was unusual enough to warrant a London investigation. With adventurous stories in his head about Uncle Mickey, whom he barely remembered, and Jack, whom he'd never met, Tony volunteered to take a team and check. They started with the old Three base, but nothing registered until they spread out to the surrounding streets.

He remembered more than felt a crackle like electricity.

"Get back!" There was a searing light before everything went dark.

* * *

The Colonel's hand reaches out and touches a key. He's too young to remember proper reel-to-reel tape recording, but he thinks something like this would best be captured by that sound, the slithering of magnetic tape as it preserves the damning words for posterity. Digital recordings, no matter how crystal-clear, how easy to copy or how required by regulations, simply are not the same for noting down for posterity the entire saga of this massive fuckup.

But where to begin? The General watches him silently.

"We first identified the boy in his early teens," the Colonel says at last. "We had records prior to that point, of course. UNIT and Torchwood were on better terms then. For the record, I should state that while our goals overlapped, not even during the golden era under Director Hartman did we always see eye to eye." The Colonel was a newly-minted lieutenant when Canary Wharf fell, but he knows the history and has seen the reports.

"The issues began when Captain Harkness took over the entire Institute. 'The Monster of Cardiff,' they called him," he says with a chuckle, and regrets it immediately. This is not precisely a formal report, but nicknames have no place in it. "We investigated his people as they became known to us. Dr. Sato, of course. The late Dr. Harper. PC Cooper. Mr. Smith. Mrs. Habiba-Martin. Agent Johnson. UNIT operative Dr. Martha Jones-Milligan worked closely with Torchwood and seemed to have a close relationship with Harkness. UNIT encouraged her to keep an eye on them for us, but later intelligence suggested that it was the other way around." He frowns, and the General frowns with him.

"PC Davidson and the Joneses joined at the same time, and as we became aware of them, we performed background checks. Mrs. Jones, nee Hallett, had previously worked for Torchwood. In 2005 she was transferred to an affiliated satellite office located in Paris, along with Mr. Jones. They married, and had three children before returning to Mr. Jones' home in Cardiff in early 2010."

The General said, "All three children were born in Paris?"

"Yes. But they maintained British citizenship, and the boy was a year old when the family returned to Cardiff. Mrs. Jones found employment at a software company, but a month later, she and Mr. Jones were back at Torchwood. It's unclear exactly when their liaison with Harkness began. In September of that year, the three of them purchased a house together, and despite the Captain's extensive reputation, no reports have come in from that point onwards of any other liaisons for him. Thus, our interest in the children."

"Captain Harkness had children of his own, did he not?"

"We assume so, although only one has been positively identified. Her wife retired from Torchwood five years ago due to injury, and we believed that avenue was closed."

The General watches him. When he doesn't continue, the General prompts, "The Jones children."

"Yes. The boy was identified as a possible acquisition. We looked at the girls, but both exhibited strong loyalty profiles with regards to Harkness. The boy, however … " The records were promising. Suspended on three occasions for fighting. School records said the fights were precipitated by other boys teasing him after public displays of affection between his father and Harkness. One call to the police from the neighbours for a domestic disturbance, though no charges were filed. Nothing in his medical records to indicate abuse, but one couldn't have everything. "We found early indications of friction at home, and felt this could be used to our advantage."

* * *

Lt. Henderson spotted the lad exactly where he expected to find him. The coffee shop was several blocks from his home, several blocks from school, and seems to provide a sanctuary away from the pressures of both. At nearly seventeen, he was gawky, not growing as gracefully into his features as his sisters, and Henderson felt a swift sympathy, remembering his own days of spots and stuttering.

"Hello, Kyle," he said, slipping into the chair across the table from him.

"Hullo."

"What's today's book?" Kyle flipped the cover over. Henderson didn't recognise it. "Any good?"

"Not so far. It's for school." Kyle took a drink from the cardboard cup in front of him, trying to look like one of the cool older kids here from uni, and missing. He had the permanent scowl and air of cynicism down, but lacked any gravitas behind them.

"Have you thought about our offer?"

Kyle's eyes flickered. "Seems a bit weird, yeah? UNIT doesn't recruit people this way."

"We make special allowances sometimes. We think you'd make a fine addition to the team."

"You want to show up Jack, you mean." Not Uncle Jack like his sisters called the man, Henderson noted. "I'm not spilling Torchwood secrets for you. I don't know any."

"We wouldn't expect you to. Torchwood is strictly British government. UNIT is worldwide." Henderson spread a smile over his features. He'd been told how to rope this one in, and he always got his target. "As for showing up Captain Harkness, between you and me, do you really have a problem with that?"

Kyle took another sip of his drink thoughtfully. "My Mum isn't going to like it." Worry crossed his features. The file said the boy had a close relationship with his mother.

"I promise you, Kyle, we would never ask you to do anything that would betray your mother's faith in you. UNIT protects the Earth. That's who we are and what we do. Torchwood wouldn't let you do that." There was a policy, laughable when established, that stated the children of Torchwood employees could not join the Institute. As if that era had led to any children. "Are you up to the challenge?"

Kyle closed his eyes, then nodded. Henderson wondered if Lisa Jones told her children the story of Judas, if her son was contemplating the weight of thirty pieces of silver in his hands.

A week later, he boarded a train to London. Surveillance said the shouting match at his home could be heard halfway down the block. Henderson received a commendation from his superior officer for the acquisition.

* * *

"Did he provide intelligence on Torchwood?"

"Not at first. We didn't ask. If he was going to be a good source, we couldn't let him shy away. He worked through the first Christmas holiday, and took leave for the second. After he returned, I had him in my office for tea and asked him if there was anything he'd feel comfortable relating." The Colonel was a Lieutenant-Colonel then, and Private Jones was nervous but ready. "He said he'd learned some details about the Sycorax crash outside Bristol. There wasn't much, and I needed to reassure him that in no way would I use the information against his parents."

The Colonel takes a drink of water. "After that, he gave us information from time to time. Small things, not of much value, but relevant. An intercepted translation, identifying a particular piece of technology. He told us that home was neutral ground and no-one discussed work the few times he visited. However, Harkness and the Joneses worked from home at times, and the Private would run across things left unattended."

"You used him as a spy."

"We never asked him to go looking for information, but after the first time, he became very eager to please." His psychological profile had told them he would be, and while the Colonel occasionally had his doubts about the profession, the boy had performed exactly according to prediction. Hindsight hurt.

"And in the other direction?"

"Not once did a single piece of classified information to which he had access wind up in Torchwood's files. We tested him several times. And of course, his later exploits convinced me of his complete loyalty."

"The incidents with his sisters."

"Yes." One sister joined UNIT after him. The other became its loudest foe.

* * *

The Colonel indicated the seat across from him. Corporal Kyle Jones sat down, clasping his own hands in front of him, white-knuckled in their grip.

"Corporal," said the Colonel genially. Jones had been dating General Ncube's daughter for several months, and as such had gained the attention of many officers in the higher levels of UNIT. Every report that crossed his desk said the same thing: Jones was bright, competent, attentive to detail, polite to a fault, and always ready to take on extra work. If the reports noted his standoffishness and his apparent lack of a sense of humour, no-one ever accused him of not looking out for the other men and women with whom he served, and the General himself said just last week that the lad was a bit shy. Nominations for officer training were coming due, and the Colonel had already written a recommendation for Jones, and was certain he'd be accepted. Of course he was willing to take a short audience with him when the boy said it was important.

"Sir." Jones frowned, and his face took on an unpleasant tic. "I … Sir, I have reason to believe Torchwood has a spy inside UNIT."

The Colonel raised his eyebrows. "Espionage is a major charge, Corporal."

"Sir." He took a breath. "It's Isabelle. I was visiting her quarters yesterday, and I found documents she should not have had clearance for. I believe she's … " He stopped. "Sir, please. She may not realise she's being used. Jack, he gets into your head. He probably gave her a line about the greater good and that kind of claptrap."

The Colonel hid his delight. He'd long suspected Harkness of trying to weasel his way in via the girl, but to have confirmation? From the boy?

"I can order a search of her quarters immediately. If what you say is true, you should know she will be brought up on charges. She could go to prison. I'm going to have to ask you to not speak to her again until we've finished the investigation."

His face broke. "She's my sister, Sir. I'm supposed to be watching out for her."

"She seems to have been watching you, instead."

* * *

"The case went to trial, which should have been closed but of course Harkness bluffed and badgered his way into the proceedings. Isabelle Jones only spent a few days in a UNIT cell and her family connexions managed to get her free from the rest. Her brother testified against her."

"Did that end his contact with his family?"

"Very nearly. Afterwards, he received two letters from his mother."

"Did you intercept them?"

"Of course. He remained under surveillance for over a year, in case he had been working with her. Nothing in the letters was of interest. Family and friend gossip, an expected entreaty for him to apologise. The letters stopped after the incident with his other sister."

Callie Jones went in a different direction from her parents and siblings. At the age of twenty-one, she established what would become the largest alien rights group in Great Britain, which put her at odds with Torchwood at least as often as with UNIT. Within the last six years, the Good Neighbours have shown up on location at sites of alien crashes and interdimensional crossings almost as soon as UNIT has arrived to contain the scenes. Demanding fair treatment and equal rights under the law for "our galactic neighbours," the group leads peaceful demonstrations outside of the official cordons. Were it anyone but Harkness' own stepdaughter in charge, the Colonel suspects the lot of them would be pumped to the gills with amnesia pills and left in Guernsey. But they haven't been, and it's probably because Torchwood finds them amusing more than annoying. They certainly don't fight as hard with Torchwood as they do with UNIT.

He wasn't present for the altercation, but the reports were plain. The group had been growing more aggressive against UNIT forces, not edging into violence but certainly toeing that line. At a downed freighter crash site, as UNIT and Torchwood were arguing over jurisdiction and the disposition of the survivors, Callie Jones crossed the perimeter. After giving her three verbal warnings, her brother shot her.

"By the time of the first contact mission, we were certain," he looks at the General and amends, "I was certain."

* * *

The Colonel ignored the worry in the back of his mind. The K'kltic had communicated thus far exclusively in mathematical language, but wanted a proper face to face meeting, promising brotherhood and advancement into a place in the wider galaxy. With their help, Earth could become an acknowledged world rather than a tiny protectorate under the Shadow Proclamation. The Colonel was of the opinion that such a step would require firm leadership on Earth, and he intended to provide it. The only members of UNIT who knew about the real mission (instead of the mission they pretended at) were those who needed to know, and by the time the rest found out, he would already be in position.

There were weak points to the plan. The K'kltic had sent a long dictionary of sorts for their language. While they had monitored Terran transmissions for decades, they requested that meeting and negotiations be conducted in their own tongue. All the soldiers and technicians picked for the mission had been given a crash course in the K'kltic language, as had the two UNIT diplomats chosen to go. No surprises as to which soldier showed the highest aptitude for the language, but then, Lt. Jones had told the Colonel that he'd been taught multiple languages, human and otherwise, from early childhood. The Colonel had taken suggestions from the few people he could trust, and every one told him the same thing: the best man for the mission was Professor Smith at Cambridge. The Colonel didn't dare trust him, though, not with his history, and so the good professor was not included in the mission, in the briefing, or anything else.

Still, the early reports from the mission had gone well. The team had safely lifted off and arrived at the neutral ground of the space station on schedule and without incident. The cover story of a routine refit and repair was firmly in place, which meant the world hadn't even watched the launch, much less cared.

This morning, reports had started coming in: symptoms of food poisoning among several team members, including the diplomats. Of course, the symptoms were also common among personnel newly exposed to the false gravity generator they'd developed from Ranthak technology. Seven members of the twelve-person team were still well, and one of the diplomats was only mildly ill, and if it was gravity sickness, they'd recover given another six hours or so.

The video link shook with static and interference. "Report."

The healthier diplomat, Leeson, said, "The K'kltic are on the long-range scanner now. They've sent word that they intend to dock in an hour." She didn't ask why there wasn't further interest in the mission from the governments of the world and their alien-hunting organisations. This meeting was happening during a known outage, complete with solar flare and solar wind activity. Their communications were enhanced by use of a particular frequency and transmission source which the Colonel didn't understand but the techs swore was stable.

It had to be stable. The Colonel intended to be a one-man audience for the greatest to-date human encounter with alien life.

"Sir," said Leeson, "Two more members of the team have just reported symptoms."

The Colonel's stomach clenched. Some alien species which had come to Earth in the past had brought viruses, some transmitted through space itself. He'd read the records on the encounters with the 456.

"Sir?"

"Continue monitoring the situation. If more team members become ill, we'll abort the mission." He didn't add that they would quarantine the team, and mostly likely leave them on the space station to die. That had been part of the initial briefing as a possible outcome.

"Yes, sir."

As the K'kltic ship neared, he collected status reports. No further illness was noted, though he suspected this might be partially due to fears on the team's part that it would sign their own death warrants to complain now. As the final report came through before the ship docked, the Colonel saw Leeson's face go pale, and she vomited off-screen.

"We have to abort the mission," the Colonel said.

"No, sir," said Leeson, wiping her mouth with her hand. "They've just attached."

"If this is an infection, we risk an interstellar incident. We can reschedule."

"I don't believe we can, sir," she said. "I think they're here."

Three healthy soldiers left. Two guarded the door, one stood beside Leeson, holding her upright. Jones.

He said, "Colonel, the outer airlock has been engaged. We are no longer in a position to stop the meeting."

"Bring the K'kltic ambassador to the camera. I will conduct the initial meeting via video." Which was against the wishes of the K'kltic, and he read that in Jones' face. And the Colonel knew barely enough to say hello. The diplomats had been chosen carefully, and he wasn't one.

"Sir, I know the language. I know the mission. I can greet them."

A cry: one of the other soldiers clutched his stomach and fell. His partner remained where he stood, but had gone grey. Any second now, Jones would be taken with whatever the illness was, food-related or viral, and this mission would be finished before it started.

"Sir?"

"Do it. But bring them where I can see them. You can translate if necessary."

"Yes, sir."

The interior airlock door spun open and the K'kltic appeared: vaguely insectoid, robes rather than armour, green and blue and gold on their exoskeletons where they could be seen.

Lt. Jones chittered at them, bobbing his head as he spoke. "This lowly one greets you," he repeated in English. He chittered again. "On behalf of the people of this world." More chittering. "We welcome you in peace."

The Colonel smiled. Good boy. The aliens seemed pleased, and chittered something back to him, which he replied to without translating. And now he would explain to them their terms, that they would be working closely with UNIT, that the people of Earth were not ready for a widespread introduction to alien life but that an exchange of information and technology could still be arranged, with a gradual, delayed entrance for the K'kltic as their relationship with UNIT blossomed. If he needed help remembering it, the Colonel would be happy to prompt him.

There was a hurried knock on the Colonel's door. He ignored it.

The boy chittered again, and the Colonel found it was harder to follow. His head bobbed, and he gestured, and the Colonel made out the words "share" and "friendship" and "planet," and then three words in English, not all together but close enough. "Lieutenant Jones!"

Jones clicked something in his hand, and the feedback from the microphone on the other side immediately stopped echoing his voice. "Lieutenant!"

Jones tilted his head and said, "In the interest of full openness, we are broadcasting this meeting to the peoples of the Earth that they may all share in this momentous occasion. We hold our hands out, not to take from you, but to share the galaxy with our neighbours in friendship. You will conduct negotiations with Professor Luke Smith, the greatest mind in our generation, who will speak with you in full knowledge of the whole world. I am feeding you the transmission data now."

The aliens chittered as the knocking increased on the door. "What is it?" the Colonel shouted.

"Sir!" came a voice through the door. His secretary. "The mission is being broadcast on BBC1."

On his screen, Jones chittered again. Then in English, he said, "You were misled. I am here on behalf of the Torchwood Institute of Earth."

* * *


	2. Two Conversations

**Chapter 2: Two Conversations Kyle Jones Never Dreamed He'd Have**

* * *

When he was ten years old, Kyle's parents sat him down in the dining room with a chocolate milkshake and asked him to save the world. It was a very good milkshake, he recalled, and he later thought he'd been bribed out of a large chunk of his life by some ice cream and chocolate syrup.

Uncle Jack did most of the talking. "A little over fifteen years from now, there's going to be a first contact incident. The species calls themselves the K'kltic. Local bunch, a few star systems away from here. They go extinct in another six hundred years. Home planet gets wiped out by an asteroid. Bad luck. I met a nice K'kltic girl once, right before the end."

"You are more distractible than a cat," said Mum.

"I am not."

"You are," said Dad. He pointed. "Look! Something shiny!"

Uncle Jack did not let his eyes follow the direction Dad pointed, though Kyle could see him strain from the effort. "Anyway. It's an important first contact because the K'kltic are going to eventually help Earth join the wider community of inhabited planets in this part of the galaxy. They sponsor us. Problem is, the first face to face meeting goes wrong. Instead of greeting the ambassador, the diplomat on hand insults the landing party. Total mistake in translation, happens more often than you'd think, which is why universal translators are in high demand." He tapped his wrist strap. "There may have been some malice involved. See, the other part of the first contact fiasco is that the K'kltic want to have their presence known to the whole world. The sign of a reasonably-developed planetary society is one where the governments of the world in question are in accord and talk to one another. Secrecy puts some at advantage over others."

Kyle drank his milkshake. Uncle Jack could go on like this for hours. Sometimes it was cool, like being inside one of his favourite television programmes, even if the aliens on those were always done wrong and he had to listen to Uncle Jack complain the whole time 'til Dad told him to leave off. He started to tune out Uncle Jack and think about the show that was on last night. The droning continued:

"There's a secret organisation in charge of the first contact mission, and they try to take charge of the operation and tell the K'kltic to only deal with them. So not only do they insult the ambassador's parentage, they also violate the terms of the initial meeting."

That had his attention. "Is it Torchwood? Are you going to mess it up?"

Something flashed across his face and was gone. "Maybe. But I've got my money on UNIT. They're more first contact-oriented than we are. We're more cleanup when things go wrong."

"Like this thing that's going to happen."

"I don't think we're going to be able to clean that up." He folded his arms. "After the mission is botched, the K'kltic briefly declare war on Earth. It only lasts a few months, and Earth fights back, but the real problem starts after that. Countries with grudges against each other, regions that want more oil, more food, more water, they all take the opportunity to grab what they can. A lot of people die."

"How many?"

"Millions. It's a useless series of bitter little wars, and at the end, the lines on the map look just the same. The K'kltic come back fifty years later, once everything is rebuilt and we've started to push out of the solar system, and that's our introduction to space."

"Everything changes."

"Yeah."

Uncle Jack rarely talked about the future. The past, either, really. For him, all of eternity amounted to "Today is the day and the only day, so make the most of it." Kyle played with the condensation on the outside of his glass, collecting cold droplets on the tips of his fingers, writing his initials on the side. "So are we gonna fix it?"

Uncle Jack grinned. Dad looked relieved. Mum looked sad. "We're going to try."

"What about … " Kyle gave his head a little tilt. "You Know Who?" He'd never admit it, but there were days when he felt that naming the Doctor out loud was like saying "Bloody Mary" into a mirror. He wasn't a stupid baby who actually believed anything would happen, but at the same time, who wanted to take the risk? Not Kyle.

"He's not going to know about it, not until we're done. And I'll be the one he's angry with, so don't worry about it." He tousled Kyle's short hair, playing with the curls. Kyle batted his hand away.

"It's going to be hard on you," said Mum, folding her hands under her chin, her eyes a little bigger and closer to tears than Kyle liked to see. "You're going to have to be very brave."

"I'm not scared."

Dad said, "That's not what she means." He placed a gentle hand on Kyle's arm, and Kyle could just about feel the love spark up his arm and flow into his chest. Dad was like that sometimes. "You're going to have to pretend some things, say things that aren't true, and you're not going to be able to tell anyone, not even your sisters."

Kyle's eyes went wide. "I can't lie to Isabelle. She always finds out." Callie did too, usually five minutes after Isabelle did, but Callie never pounced on him and gave him friction burns on his arms until he pushed her off.

Uncle Jack said, "We'll tell the girls when the time is right. But for now, it's only you."

Then they told him about the narrative.

Of all the phrases and passcodes and secrets that made up their lives after that day, no two words induced quite the number of eyerolls, sighs, and invocations of "Oh God, not this again" as "the narrative." The narrative took the old trope about fathers and sons not getting along, added a dollop of typical adolescent power struggle against a stepparent, a dash of homophobia, and then mixed in a strong love for Kyle's mother. Or as Callie put it when she was finally told, an Oedipal conflict in a blender turned up to frappe and poured out thickly for the benefit of everyone watching.

"I haven't got into a fight in months," Kyle said.

"Good," said Dad.

Uncle Jack said, "We don't want you to start any fights. Just … Take things more personally." There was a lot to take personally. Kyle and his sisters didn't look like the other kids, didn't speak quite like them, and Kyle had yet to meet anyone who responded positively upon discovering their family situation.

Kyle looked at Mum. "You told me not to. That they're just stupid kids who don't understand anything."

"They are, dear." After the first time he'd come home with a black eye and a note from his teacher, they'd had a long talk which boiled down to this: other people's prejudices were their own idiocy, and knocking their teeth out wouldn't help. ("You are _not_ to congratulate him," Mum snapped at his dads when she thought Kyle was out of earshot.)

"You said not to let them bother me." The girls had got a similar talk, though not the same one. Making friends came easily for his sisters but Kyle didn't have the knack. When other kids looked for a target, Kyle didn't have a circle of mates surrounding him. The last time, Eddie and Isabelle had waded into the fray for him, which had earned Isabelle a note home of her own, Eddie a puffed-up chest for his Da, and Kyle yet more teasing that his little sister had to help him in a fight.

"Let them," said Uncle Jack.

* * *

Anyone who played chess seriously knew it required patience, practice, and the ability to see an infinite number of moves stemming out from the first, and anticipate which were the most likely. One would think that Jack would be good at patience, but the truth was that all eternity had been granted to someone who got antsy when the microwave took too long.

"You're crap at chess," Callie said one day, as they sat in the dining room poring over plans.

"The respect of young people for their elders never goes out of style."

"I'm serious. Even Izzy can beat you half the time."

"Oi!" said Isabelle from where she sat constructing a tiny castle out of wheat crackers. Planning meetings bored her. "Sitting right here."

"She's right," said Mum. "Which is why this isn't a game of chess."

"I am perfectly good at chess. But we're playing poker." Jack pointed to Kyle. "You're the Ace."

Isabelle said, "Chess, poker, you're still the Queen."

"Damn right," said Jack. "Most powerful piece on the chessboard."

"Plans," said Dad, who was trying not to laugh. "We need them."

Isabelle said, "I'm not due to be outed until next year. What's to plan?"

"I have a thought," said Kyle. Isabelle stopped her building. The others looked at him expectantly. "General Ncube has a daughter my age. I think I should ask her out."

Jack grinned. "Okay, as side plans go, this one has potential."

"Is she nice?" asked Mum.

"She's dim," said Isabelle. "Pretty, but that's about it. Are you serious?"

"Do not underestimate the appeal of pretty and dumb," Jack said.

"We don't," Dad said, petting Jack's head and earning a scowl.

"Her name is Christa," said Kyle. "Grapevine says she thinks I'm cute."

"You _are_ cute," said Mum.

Isabelle said, "The word is actually that she thinks you're hot. But she thinks that of all the boys in uniforms."

"If I started asking her out around April or May, I could bring her home for Christmas next December."

Dad said, "Bring her here?"

"We'd have to be on our best behaviour the whole time," said Mum. She glanced around the house, distressed, as if Christa were coming tomorrow.

Jack sat back, hands together. After a long moment, he said, "That could work. If she saw you here, angry with us, everything awkward, it would help your cover."

Kyle nodded. "I thought so. I'm going to need help on that. Fancy teaching me some of your better pickup lines?"

"You dream and dream of this day," Jack started, but Dad waved him down.

Callie said, "But that makes this your last real holiday back home. Once you grass on Izzy, you won't be able to come back."

Mum said, "We still need to work out a contact system for when we lose Isabelle."

"Working on it," said Jack.

"One more thing," said Callie. "I have an idea."

"Share," said Jack.

"We've got to prove Kyle's more loyal to UNIT than to Torchwood."

"That's my job," said Isabelle, resuming her cracker castle. "Make him look good."

"But that's not really him."

"He turns me in." Isabelle looked at Jack. "You've got the barrister ready?"

"On retainer," said Dad.

Callie said, "But we need something active. Something to show there's no doubt. He needs to shoot one of us."

"What?!" Kyle had been leaning back in his chair the way Mum hated, balancing on the back two legs. Now the front legs slammed to the floor. "No."

"That's good," said Jack.

"No, it isn't. I'm not shooting anyone." Terror filled his chest, and he held his stomach in an attempt not to lose his dinner.

"This is mad," said Mum.

"No, it'll be perfect," Jack said. "We're always butting heads with UNIT. I'll do something stupid while we're on-site, he can shoot me." He grinned. "It'll work with the narrative."

"No," Kyle said.

Callie said, "That won't work, either. Your well-kept secret isn't kept well enough. People know about you inside UNIT. It'll look suspicious."

"Exactly," said Kyle, as Jack pouted.

She said, "Which is why he should shoot me."

"Out of the question," said Mum. "No one is getting shot."

"Why not me?" asked Isabelle. "It could be during or after the trial. Cement the differences between us."

Callie shook her head. "Too easy, and too neat. You're the traitor, remember? He'll already have broken with you. The narrative says he gets on with Mum, so it's got to be me or Papa."

"Then it's me," said Dad. "We're not risking your life."

"Bloody narrative," said Mum.

Kyle said, "Amen."

"This'll work," Callie said. "It'd be a permanent break with the family." She looked at Dad. "And it's got to be me. You're not healthy enough. I'll recover. You might not."

"Martha says I'm fine. It was nothing." No-one listened to him.

"I'm not shooting you. I'm not shooting Dad, or Isabelle, or even an obnoxious immortal who'd get up from it and do jumping jacks. No."

"You'd have to be very careful," said Mum.

"We're done," Kyle said, and went out of the room.

Callie found him a few minutes later in the backyard, sitting at the edge of the porch. She sat down gracefully beside him, one leg tucked under her, and he felt a twinge of familiar envy. His sisters had inherited Mum's poise and ease, while the best Dad could say to Kyle was that the awkwardness should even itself out in another year or so. Probably.

"I can't do this."

"I trust you. You can."

"Cal, I could kill you." He was hollow inside, like a melon cut to the rind.

"You won't." The quiet confidence in her voice made him turn to her.

"You don't know that. As it is, everyone already hates me."

"Not us. God, Kyle, you're the bravest person I've ever met."

"Don't let them in there hear you say that."

"They think so, too. This will work. Do it, and no-one will doubt you ever again."

"_I_ will," he said, but it was in defeat.

She took his hand, and they walked together back to the dining room as they had when they were kids and she'd been teaching him to walk.

Four sets of eyes waited for him. Isabelle's castle was finished, in all its crackery glory. He sighed.

Jack pointed at him. "You're on the firing range every day, practising. I want you to be able to hit a fly at fifty metres."

"I can do that."

* * *

**Interlude: Intergalactic Manwhore Pickup Lines and Other Things to Learn At Christmastime With Your Family**

* * *

"There's always the old standards," Jack said, and with a grin and a flourish, he took Kyle's hand, gazed into his eyes, and said, "Did it hurt when you fell down from Heaven?"

Kyle blinked at him. "Seriously?"

Callie was less kind, and laughed until she couldn't breathe. "Oh. Oh no. Tell me you never actually tried that one."

"What?" said Jack. "It's a good line."

Isabelle said, "If the target of your affections is drunk and stupid, yes."

"Too much," said Kyle. "I think I need something more subtle."

"Subtle. Subtle. Okay, I think I can do subtle."

"You can't," said Mum, not really part of the conversation but chiming in from her office down the hallway.

After he got The Talk from his parents (a few minutes after accidentally catching the three of them on the settee one night) Kyle had often wondered when he'd be getting the advanced lessons on navigating the waters of interpersonal relationships. He'd assumed Jack would lead the discussion. Dad would be there as well, more sensible about the topic if far less travelled, and between them, Kyle would learn everything he'd ever need to know about picking up girls. He had not banked on his mother and sisters being within earshot and offering commentary.

Jack sighed. He dropped Kyle's hand and placed a strong but gentle hand on his forearm and went for the eye thing again. "Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazing eyes?" His voice was pitched low, and he threw in a hint of a laugh, that seductive and charming tone that had dropped more pants than Kyle had eaten hot dinners.

"That one's not as bad," said Callie.

"You've got to have a follow-up ready," Isabelle said. "Because if it works, she's gonna ask why, and you don't want to be there flailin', sayin' 'Cos they're blue,' or something. Especially when they're actually green. It's embarrassing."

"Never happened to me," said Jack.

Dad said, "Aren't they usually naked by that point?"

"Yes."

Kyle said, "Barring surprise nudity, then, can we please work on more of these?"

Dad said, "You could just introduce yourself."

"That only works for him. And if I start introducing myself as 'Captain Jack Harkness' … "

Isabelle finished for him, " … you'll probably score more often. I don't think I've seen you on a date since we were assigned together."

Several sharp comments came to mind, and Kyle ignored them all. Isabelle liked dating, and did it as frequently and enthusiastically as possible, and he couldn't blame her, and he certainly couldn't snipe at her for it, considering.

"Okay, here's a good one," said Jack. "You just say 'Gorgeous,' or possibly 'Lovely.' When she asks what you're talking about, point to the view or the moon or whatever, but make eye contact with her when you said that it's beautiful."

Callie made a loud honking noise.

"What?"

"That's awful. No self-respecting woman would buy into that line."

"I'll have you know Alice was conceived because of that line."

Callie made her "Ew. Parent sex." face.

Isabelle said, "These are all terrible lines. You don't go comparing women to the stars or the moon. 'Hi, you look like a rock in outer space. Fancy a shag?'"

Dad watched them for a moment. "All your lines really are terrible, you know."

"Excuse me?"

"It's all in your delivery. And that chemical factory you call a body."

"You like my chemical factory."

"Staying on topic," said Callie, loudly. "I think Papa's right. You do a lot of body language, lots of touching. You've been touching Kyle each time, emphasising the eye contact, that sort of thing. And you've got that pheromone thing."

"Everyone's got the pheromone thing," said Jack. "People smell good when they want to have sex. It's human."

Isabelle said, "Kyle, don't shower."

Kyle asked, "At some point, will there be any _good_ advice?"

"No," said Mum from the office.

"This is _all_ good advice," said Jack. He rubbed his head. "Some of what I do is pretty unique. You tell someone you've won prizes for your oral skills, they're going to want to see a trophy or a demonstration."

"Oh God," said Callie.

Isabelle said, "You've been actively having sex for nearly two hundred years, and this is the best you've got?"

"I haven't had to pull in over twenty years, and before that, about two thousand years. Forgive me for being rusty."

Mum came down the hallway. "You're all talking at cross-purposes. Jack, when you use a line, what's the purpose?"

"What do you mean?"

Mum did something to her voice and carriage and then did a very passable: "Captain Jack Harkness. And you are?" Dad whistled. Mum asked, "Why do you use a line?"

"To get sex."

"Exactly. Kyle, why do you want to use a line?"

"To get Christa to go out with me."

"Are you going to have sex with her?"

And there was the blush he'd been hoping would pass him by for this conversation. "It wasn't on the agenda. I'd like not to add 'whore' to my list of accomplishments."

"Perfectly respectable profession," said Jack.

"No," said Kyle, and meant it.

Callie said, "So, what do _your_ parents do for a living?"

Kyle and Isabelle chorused: "Something with computers."

Mum said, "You're trying to meet a girl, play nice, and not have sex with her. Don't act like a man on the pull. Act like a gentleman." She turned to Dad. "Show him."

Dad took Mum's hand, kissed it softly. In a posh accent, he said, "My dear, you look radiant."

In an equally posh accent, she replied, "Thank you, darling."

Isabelle snickered.

Jack sighed. Then he stood, took Mum's other hand and coaxed her towards him. He kissed it, grinned, and said, "Nice tits. Wanna fuck?"

Callie covered her eyes with her hand as Mum flushed. "That really does only work for you, you know."

"Is it working now?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," said Dad, and he grabbed each of them by a hand and dragged them towards the stairs. "Back later." And then they were gone.

For a moment, all three of them shared the "Ew. Parent sex." face, and then Kyle slumped.

"This isn't going to work."

"Just be nice," said Callie. "You can do nice."

"Tell her you think she's beautiful," said Isabelle. "No beating around the bush with stupid comparisons to summer's days or interstellar objects."

"Stars are not technically interstellar," said Kyle. "They are stellar."

"And don't go correcting her all the time," said Callie. "No-one likes someone coming behind them saying, 'You did that wrong.' Laugh at her dumb jokes, be nice to her dumb friends, and pay attention to her."

"Definitely pay attention to her," said Isabelle. "The last woman I dated broke up with me because I kept fallin' asleep when she talked. It was her fault. She was that boring."

"That's terrible," said Callie, and Isabelle mimicking snoring until Callie punched her in the arm.

Kyle said, "Anything else I should know?"

"Don't be a phoney," said Callie, and immediately said, "Sorry," when she saw his face fall. "Fuck the narrative and the mission. Just don't lie to her except on the things you really have to."

"I can handle that. But how do I get her to go out with me to begin with?"


	3. Every Time a Door Shuts

**Chapter 3: Every Time a Door Shuts, A Window Gets Smashed Open With a Brick**

* * *

The party was loud, which he hated, and everyone was drinking, which wasn't as bad. Kyle walked around with a glass of stout, so people smiled to see him with a drink and no-one cared that he only wet his lips with it. He needed to stay sharp.

Christa had come with a set of her friends, as she often did when her father was in the country. Her laugh bubbled over the crowd, ramped up by the alcopop in her hand and the two that had preceded it. She did look like an angel, a little, with the overhead lights making her dark curls glow. If he'd been Jack, he could have got away with it, he was certain, but he wasn't Jack, didn't have the magic.

His chance came when she went back to the bar for an ill-considered fourth drink. He ditched his glass at a side table to make an excuse to get a fresh one, and sidled up to her.

"Hi!" she said, with a diamond gleam. All sparkles, from the glitter paint drawn in an abstract, swirled design from her wrist to her elbow, to the brush of sparkling dust on her red heels.

"Hi," he managed. "You're Christa, yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, and giggled. "I like your accent."

He just kept the blush down. "Really? I've been trying to lose it for years."

"Don't. It's sexy." Suddenly Kyle wondered who was picking up whom, as she said, "You're Kyle, right?"

"You're good."

"Not according to rumour," she said, and laughed again, and yes, she was trying to pick him up. Isabelle had told him she'd heard Christa fancied him, but Kyle had figured she was teasing him. Now what? Jack's lines went through his head and out again. He wasn't cut out for that kind of thing.

Something Callie suggested sprung to mind:

"I like your shoes."

Christa grinned.

* * *

Christmas was exactly as painful as planned, and Kyle found himself wishing he hadn't floated the suggestion. Isabelle started things in the car on the way there, needling Kyle while staying polite to Christa. That at least he was used to.

When they pulled up in front of the house, the real act began. Callie greeted them at the door, flinging her arms around Isabelle and barely acknowledging Kyle. Mum was warmer, even kissing him on the cheek, but Dad stayed in the sitting room, only rose from his chair to shake Christa's hand politely before sweeping Isabelle into another hug.

After Christa had been introduced around, Kyle played his own part. "Where's Himself?" he asked, annoyed but avoiding an outright sneer.

"Jack's at work," said Mum. "You know how things are over Christmas."

Christa said, "If it's Christmas, it must be an alien invasion." Isabelle snorted. She'd come to enjoy Christa's company lately.

Callie said, "Aliens aren't always invaders. We're on good terms with a number of extraterrestrial species."

Dad said, "Yes, the ones who aren't shooting at us, eating us, or trying to usurp the planet for resources."

"When we're shooting first, we don't get to take the moral high ground."

"As long as we're not supper for a blowfish, I'm fine with that."

"Blowfish are vegetarians, Papa."

Kyle took Christa's bags. "Let me show you where you're sleeping." He led her upstairs amid annoyed grumbles from the sitting room. At least he wasn't the only one arguing with their parents this trip.

The guest room was ostensibly Jack's bedroom, but he didn't need to keep up that pretence at least, not on a visit where they were flaunting the whole arrangement instead of carefully sidestepping it. Kyle set the bags on the bed while Christa shut the door and then snaked her arms around him. He tensed and then relaxed.

"I was hoping to see your room," she said against the back of his neck.

"My sisters have informed me that shelves full of action figures and comic books are dead last on the list of decorations my girlfriend wants to see."

Christa chuckled against him. "Any rocket ships?"

"A few." All of them had been appropriately modified to resemble real spaceships because there were times when even Jack needed to eat his M&Ms in the proper order.

"Show me your nerdy room."

He took her to his room and let her peek inside, but blocked the way. "Don't walk in there. I think my bed is made up with Thomas the Tank Engine sheets again."

"We could ruin them."

Kyle sighed inwardly, then gave her a quick kiss. "Tempting, but no."

Christa gave him that look, the one she always wore when he broke away from kissing her or holding her, when he made an excuse to leave before he spent the night with her. She was patient with his insistence that they not sleep together, but that patience was wearing thin.

"As much as I'd like to spend the next three days up here," he said, "we should go back downstairs."

"All right." She took his hand. Until they left, and his mother hugged him goodbye, it was the only time anyone touched him for the rest of the visit.

The rest of their trip was deeply uncomfortable. Everyone stayed in her or his role perfectly, and Jack helped by spending most of the three days at the Hub, but coming home just enough to glare at Kyle and overplay his "obnoxious American" act.

Kyle found himself depressed the whole time, missing the easy banter and physical affection he normally indulged in whilst back among his family; home was where the hugs were. Instead, there were cold silences and tight conversations of the type usually reserved for when Uncle Douglas was in town. The others were careful to treat Christa civilly, but as the two of them drove back to London, she told him she was glad he rarely spoke to the rest of his family because she couldn't imagine coming to visit again.

Isabelle stayed an extra day and took the train back. When he picked her up from the station, they went back to her small room and she hugged him for an hour as they talked about stupid things. They both cried a little, though neither would ever admit it.

A week later, he turned her in for espionage.

* * *

The General's secretary let him in, and Kyle stood at attention until he was allowed a seat. General Ncube smiled at him from across his expansive desk.

"You asked to see me, sir?"

"I did. I wanted to see how you're doing. This has been a stressful time, and you're at the centre of it."

"Yes, sir. I'm fine, sir." He tried not to think about what was coming next, despite practising every day for it out on the firing range, over and over until his muscles cramped.

"No problems from home?"

Kyle allowed himself a squirm. "I made my decision, sir. I knew my family would be unhappy."

"You should know I'm very proud of your decision. So is Christa."

Kyle smiled tightly. He'd come to like her, which hadn't been part of the original plan. She was smarter than she let on: the alcopops she drank when they went out were always watered down heavily with sparkling water or juice, she could hold her own in talks about politics and books, and while she was concentrating on art in uni, she was studying the history and theory, and wanted to work in a museum.

"I like people underestimating me," she'd told him once, as they'd gone for a coffee after some deep French film she made him take her to see.

"You like surprising them," Kyle had replied, but he'd thought that he knew what she meant. Had they met under different circumstances, had he not set out from the beginning to use her, he'd think she was, if not a perfect match for him, at least someone he wouldn't mind spending his life with, someone who could understand him. It wasn't romantic, not in the sweeping fashion of the stories he'd learned as a child, but he thought he could have been content.

To her father, now, he said, "I'm glad to have her with me. She's been very supportive."

The General smiled. "She, ah, told me about the trip the two of you took back home over the holidays."

He shifted in his chair again. "Sir."

"You know, I've been in UNIT for over thirty years. It's been like a second family to me."

"Yes, sir. Christa has told me as much." He kept his face stilled, a trick his father had shown him years ago. The General didn't need to know she'd added that her own father loved his second family much more than his first.

The General's features softened. "About Christa. May I talk with you with the ranks aside?"

Kyle swallowed. "Sir, if you are asking my intentions toward your daughter … "

"I am, actually. The two of you have been seeing each other for several months now."

"Eleven, sir. I have been informed that I'm taking her somewhere nice for our anniversary."

General Ncube smiled. "Her mother informs me of the same thing on a regular basis."

"If you are worried, sir, you should know that I have attempted to be a gentleman at all times around her. She's a very special girl." Whose purpose was to tell her dad just how miserable Kyle's home life was even before he squealed on Isabelle. She deserved so much more than this charade he'd given her.

"I think so as well, obviously. But I have to ask. You're a healthy young man. Yet Christa tells me … " he faded off leadingly.

"We haven't, sir. I don't believe in that sort of thing prior to marriage."

The General's jaw dropped. He collected himself rapidly. "I'm sorry. I expected, given your background … " Again, he didn't continue.

Kyle finished for him, "That I was raised to think people should be having sex every ten minutes?"

The General spread his hands. "Captain Harkness has a reputation."

"Yes, sir. And my parents have been enjoying the benefits since I was a child. However, that is their decision, and this is mine." He frowned. "Christa's unhappy with me, isn't she?"

"I don't believe so. Just confused."

"As I told her, sir, I'm left-handed."

"Pardon me?"

He wet his lips. "I have a perfectly serviceable hand, sir. I wouldn't dream of dishonouring your daughter by forgetting that."

"I see," said the General, a flush of his own appearing. "Well, then. The confusion is not going to be an issue."

"No, sir. I can explain it to her again if you'd like, sir."

"I wouldn't presume to give you advice on the matter," said the General.

"Of course not, sir." In a way, Kyle wished this had gone differently. If the General had forbade him from dating his daughter, that would have been a perfect ending to the relationship. Instead, he was left with the unenviable task of extricating himself. He'd avoided sleeping with her to keep from hurting her, and now it appeared he'd have to hurt her anyway. "She deserves better than me," he said aloud.

"My father told me once that a happy marriage is made of two people who believe they each don't deserve the other."

Marriage? Who'd mentioned … Oh yes. It had been Kyle. Definitely time to extricate himself before she started planning their wedding. Besides, he didn't want Christa to be there for the next part. More selfishly, he did because he hadn't a single person to lean on now that Isabelle was gone, but he didn't want to embroil Christa further. Kyle hated lying, even as his whole life was a lie. Kissing her felt like more lies, like he was an actor, and she needed more than that.

"Yes, sir," he said softly, and wondered if he should steal one more kiss before the end.

* * *

Kyle sat alone in the mess and tried not to think about anything as he mouthed his food.

The worst thing about the whole situation was the quiet. He never had mates, not really. He'd talk with the other soldiers, even go to the pub now and then with them, but he wasn't given to small talk, didn't joke around, and frankly, didn't want to make friends whom he'd betray later. Christa had paraded him around to her friends, and he'd managed "charming" as much as he could with the few in-depth lessons he could squeeze in the last time he was home and safe, but she hadn't needed charming after the very beginning.

And now she was seeing a handsome young Lieutenant under her father's command who wasn't Kyle, and he tried to hope she was happy, but he was also certain she'd started the rumour floating around that he was gay, so he felt less charitable than he could.

The other blokes didn't care if he was gay or not; half their squad was gay or bi. The whispers and stares, and the occasional cut-off laugh, only a handful were about whether or not he'd shag a man. ("Like his dads. Did you hear?") He liked those better than the other reasons.

Callie had looked him in the eye when he'd squeezed the trigger. She'd worn a red halter top that day, showing off her lithe arms, and she'd put on a little half-smile. "Play for the cheap seats," Jack had always told them, "but stay in character." He wasn't sure if the smile was in character, or if she'd been encouraging him.

Her boyfriend Michael stood next to her, a hand on her other shoulder. Kyle'd read his lips: "Don't antagonise them." And she'd kept walking.

He hadn't heard the screaming, not at first, not with the blood pounding in his ears and the echo of the shot deafening him. Aunt Gwen. Their new doctor, Bridget, she hadn't screamed, but she'd run from the crash to come to Callie's side, and that was the last thing Kyle saw before his commander seized his weapon.

"I take full responsibility, sir," Kyle had said. "I gave her three warnings."

"You did. You followed procedure. I still need to take your weapon until we've made a report." His commander looked over at the tableau, as Bridget applied pressure to Callie's wound, as chaos broke out amongst the volunteers at the Good Neighbours protest, demanding that "bloody Torchwood" stay away from her.

"Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir."

"Soldier, you will remain here … "

"Sir, I just shot my sister. I'm going to go vomit over there. When I return, I will be happy to continue to discuss the matter."

As he'd heaved the weak breakfast he'd managed earlier, he'd heard Jack shouting, panic in his voice: "Bridget, talk to me. How is she?" and louder, "Dammit, who took the shot?! Us or them?"

A laugh caught Kyle's attention from across the mess, and shook the memory. He always assumed any laughs were directed at him, but none of the men or women at that table looked his way. This time. The centre of attention was some fellow Kyle didn't recognise, blond-edging-on-ginger type, probably one of the recruits who'd just completed officer training last week. The new guy laughed again, and it carried. Tosser.

Kyle looked down at his plate and noticed most of his food was gone. He couldn't say what it'd tasted like. He _could_ say what the coffee tasted like, but he'd chosen tea for that same reason.

He wanted Isabelle there to talk with. She always knew what to do, although to be fair, her suggestions ran from the absurd to the obscene. If he didn't know for a fact that Jack hadn't met Mum until after Isabelle's birth, he'd guess Jack was her biological dad. It was funny, he thought sometimes. Their parents each had their little clones, and their favourites, even if they insisted otherwise. Isabelle was just like Jack without the damage or the time-travel (yet), and she was Dad's pet. Kyle knew how much like his father he was, and knew that Mum quietly but firmly held him highest in her heart. And Callie …

"Hullo," said a new voice. Kyle looked up. The not-quite-ginger bloke had his tray.

Kyle sighed. "Look. I don't know what your friends told you, but it's probably wrong. I didn't want to hurt my sister, but Regulations say no-one crosses the line. I didn't want to turn in my other sister, but she was spying. And I don't fancy blokes."

The man sat down. "My mates didn't say a thing about any of that, but thanks for letting me know." He smiled kindly. "Oh, sorry. Is this seat taken?"

Kyle glanced around his empty table. "No."

"I was just saying to Harmon over there that you looked like you could use a friend. He said something, no idea what, wasn't really paying attention." Not-quite-ginger shoved mash into his mouth with every sign of enjoyment.

Lt. Harmon had a number of opinions about Kyle. If Kyle had noticed him at not-quite-ginger's table, he'd have been on guard. Now he had a stranger sitting with him. Kyle poked at his own food, not hungry, and settled for finishing his tea.

"I'm fine, thanks," Kyle said. "I like eating alone, Gives me a chance to catch up on my reading." He indicated the book he'd brought with him mostly as a prop against the stares.

"I see." Not-quite-ginger took another bite of food. "This restaurant has an unusual flair, don't you agree? I've seen scallops paired with glazed carrots and artichokes before, but the sauce on the wild rice really brings out the flavours in the rest." He took a tasting sip of the wretched coffee. "And the body on this merlot is striking." His eyes sparked, letting Kyle in on the joke.

Kyle's lips twitched. "I'm just here for the ambience."

"Mum always said," the bloke said, then paused. "Well, Mum actually always used to say, 'Rose, make that husband of yours fix the bloody dishwasher. He's taken it apart again!' But when she wasn't yelling at my brother-in-law, she said, 'Never eat alone. Go out with a mate, have someone in. Alone's no good.' And she'd know. She was alone for a long time, my mum."

Kyle hid his startle at the name. Not-quite-ginger couldn't know how many of Kyle's childhood stories began with: "So this one time, the Doctor and Rose and I … " It was better than "Once upon a time" because these stories were always true, if embellished madly and then bowdlerised quickly whenever Dad cleared his throat.

"It's not an issue," said Kyle, and to prove it, he opened his book, completely unaware of what page he'd been on or even what this particular trashy space novel was about. Didn't matter.

"Anyway, my mates and I were headed to the pub tonight and wanted to know if you'd like to come with."

"I don't … " Harmon was setting him up for something. "No."

"Teetotaller?"

"I don't socialise. Much. Thank you," he added, and went back to not really reading his novel.

"Oh, there's no time like the present. Tick-tock, time's a wastin', sort of thing."

Kyle froze. "Sorry. I didn't catch your name."

Not-quite-ginger held out his hand. "Tyler. I'm new." His eyes laughed, brown as his sister's.

And that was how Kyle met Tony.

* * *

**Interlude: The Comedy of Edward Rhys Williams and Isabelle Victoire Jones, in Three Parts**

* * *

Everyone always assumed that Eddie and Isabelle were a couple. They played together as children, hung out together as teenagers, and worked together as adults. He met all her sweethearts almost as soon as she did, and she was responsible for introducing him to most of his girlfriends. (Except Megan. They didn't talk about Megan.) But for all of that, they'd only ever given it a go once, when they were sixteen and horny as hell, and Isabelle had told him later it was like French-kissing Kyle, and that was that. Isabelle was his best, oldest and dearest friend, and the rare times she wandered into his fantasies at night could be dismissed with the notion that every other woman he'd ever met and wasn't related to spent time there, too.

If someone had asked Eddie when he was three who his best friend was, he'd have said Isabelle's brother. (To be honest, he'd probably have said "sock," as language and Eddie didn't come together properly for some time.) When they were kids, Eddie and Kyle and Isabelle played together whenever time and Torchwood allowed. But while Kyle found out quickly that he'd rather curl up on the nearest sofa with a book, Eddie still wanted to play soldiers and action heroes and aliens, and Isabelle loved those games. She took the lead, assigning him toys to move with his pudgy fingers and telling him, "Now this is the game where we're shootin' the bad aliens with the new guns, and you're the bad alien and the Bruce" -- their heroes were always named Bruce for a reason known only to Isabelle -- "and I'm the good alien and the other Bruce."

When they were in the throes of adolescence, Kyle had already adopted his permanent scowl and so Eddie spent his time with Isabelle, who was in his year at school, trudging behind her as she found places for them to break into and explore, standing shamefaced with her when they were caught yet again, and chuckling afterwards as they made up crazy stories about what they'd found. Their favourite hideout was in the sprawling branches of a tree in Eddie's yard, and they'd sit for hours counting the few stars they could see among the streetlights, and reading comic books with their torches.

"You _can_ tell her no," Mam said one night, a headache clearly forming as she drove him home from the police station. Isabelle had already been bundled into Jack's car, and Eddie had just caught the beginnings of "Where the _hell_ do you keep your brain?" before the slam of the door had cut him off mid-shout.

"I know," said Eddie, gazing out his window at the passing streets. But for the life of him, he couldn't imagine why he would.

At twenty, Isabelle called Eddie to tell him she was finishing up her classes at uni and enlisting with UNIT. Only her immediate follow up of: "Don't you bloody dare, Eddie Williams," kept him from doing the same.

"Keep my spot warm," she said.

At twenty-two, Isabelle was up on charges of espionage and more, and Eddie knew the only way she managed to escape prison was because of who her parents were. Funny thing was, as far as Mam said, Torchwood never received any of the things she was accused of finding out, and anyway, Auntie Toshiko had hacked the UNIT systems years ago, giving them any intel they needed. Isabelle refused to talk about it, but she did tell him what they were doing next.

"Eddie, we're goin' to hunt ghosts."

* * *

"I need a favour, and you can't tell anyone."

"Good morning to you, too," Eddie said around a yawn. "How's your dad?"

"Better. Favour."

"Fine, fine," Eddie said, stumbling out of bed. Oh God, was it even morning yet? He grasped around the floor for his trousers.

"At ten AM, I need you at the intersection before the hospital. Bring a lorry."

He laughed. "Oh, how'm I gonna do that, then?" The line went dead. "Isabelle?"

Eddie looked at his alarm clock. Not quite seven. He could crawl back into bed and get some sleep, or he could go downstairs before Da woke up, see if Mam left any coffee in the pot, and nick Da's keys. Living with his parents was temporary. He told himself so every morning.

The coffee had gone cold. He made some tea, popped it into a travel mug, and went to steal a lorry.

* * *

The engine ran as Eddie tapped his fingers unhappily on the steering column to the rhythm of the only music station the battered old radio could find. When Isabelle tapped on the window, he unlocked her door.

"Go two blocks that way," she said. "There's a car park."

"I'm fine, thank you. And you're quite welcome for the lorry, no trouble at all."

"Now, Eddie."

He drove them to the spot, grumbling as he went. When they parked, she looked at him. "Dad's a little better. Uncle Jack got him a private room for reasons of national security."

Eddie grinned. "So he's feeling _much_ better then?"

"Not for that," Isabelle said, but she smirked. "Here they come." A car, a rental by the look, parked beside them. It took Eddie a full two seconds to recognise Kyle with some other bloke he didn't know.

"Oh no," he said, locking the doors again. "I'm not gettin' involved with this."

Isabelle unlocked the doors and got out. She pulled Kyle into a big hug. Eddie frowned. The last time he'd seen the two of them together, it had been right after Isabelle's trial. Hugging hadn't been on the plate then.

In the mirror, he watched as Isabelle helped the two of them into the back.

"All right," she said. "Hospital. Loading zone in the back."

Eddie held still. "You mind telling me what's going on?"

"Kyle's goin' to see Dad."

"That'll give him another heart attack."

"No, it won't. They both really need this." Isabelle's face was drawn in hurt, and he wanted to give her a quick squeeze.

"If Jack finds out, he'll only yell at you. He'll murder me. And then Mam will go spare."

"He won't. Eddie, you've got to trust me. We don't have much time."

He sighed, and then as he knew he would, he drove the lorry to the hospital's backside where the deliveries came.

"Stay here," she said, pecking him on the cheek. "You can turn off the engine. We'll be back soon, but not that soon."

Eddie watched as she got out, and Kyle and the other bloke got out of the back. Isabelle led Kyle to the back door, which swung open just as they got there. Eddie's heart stopped: he saw the coat before Jack's face came into view. Dammit!

But the door stayed open, and Isabelle and her brother went inside, and Eddie was certain that before the door closed completely, he saw Jack draw Kyle into a hug.

The passenger side door opened and the other bloke slipped inside the van.

"Hi," he said with a smile. "You must be Eddie."

He must. No one else would be crazy enough to listen to Isabelle all the damned time. He loved her, though. Kind of in the way he loved his baby sister, and a little too much in the way he hoped he'd love his wife someday. He loved the way that she ran madly headfirst into trouble. He loved that he could count three pints in and know for a fact she was about to start belting out a disturbingly Sapphic rendition of "Jessie's Girl" into the nearest microphone. He loved that she never, ever left him behind, even though sometimes he suspected that boring old Eddie Williams was the least-exciting thing she saw in any given day, and that included her breakfast.

"Yeah. And you are?"

"Tony." They shook hands.

"You work with Kyle?"

"Sometimes. He's my best mate."

"He used to be mine. When we were little. We don't talk much now." Well, he'd broken with his family, and he'd shot poor Callie, hadn't he? "Jack's going to kill him. And us for helping."

"Family's complicated," said Tony, staring out the window at the hospital. "My Mum always said if you're not tempted to murder someone you're related to, you're not putting in enough effort."

Eddie snorted. "I guess so."

"She said it while she was considering shooting my brother-in-law."

"Did she?"

"Not that time."

"What did he do?"

Tony waved his hand. "Who knows? They were always badgering each other." His face slid into a smile. "John had a habit of taking things apart. The microwave. The car. He always put them back together again. Well, usually. And sometimes they still worked. He showed me what he did to our doorbell one day when he was bored." He shook his head and laughed. "My sister yelled at him for an hour after that one."

"What happened?"

"Let's just say that everyone within a square kilometre of our house was also unamused." They both laughed. Tony was easy to laugh with, bit like Jack.

"Where's your family live?"

"Far." He looked up at the hospital again. "When this is all done, I may get a chance to go home."

"When you and Kyle get back to London?"

Tony stared at him blankly. "Oh. Yes." He was silent for the rest of the wait.

* * *

"So, fancy an island holiday?"

Isabelle grinned at him, but it wasn't her usual mad grin that preceded fun and / or legal troubles. She was nervous, dancing up and down on her toes.

"If I said yes?"

"I'd say hooray and thank you and all meals are provided and you can't tell anyone."

Eddie's eyes narrowed. "Where are we going?"

"Bit of an overnight. Flat Holm."

"I thought Flat Holm was off-limits." His Mam got weird when the name came up. Something about Torchwood, he was sure, but Eddie was kept firmly out of and away from Torchwood business.

"We're allowed tonight. And tomorrow. Maybe one day more." Still the nervous bouncing.

"Are there ghosts?"

All their parents had gone spare when Isabelle told them what she and Eddie were doing with their lives. Ghost-hunting wouldn't pay the rent, they said. No actual ghosts had ever been found, they said, with all so-called paranormal activity attributable to aliens or Rift activity. And Isabelle had grinned her "We're going to need bail money later" grin, and told them that just meant the two of them were miles ahead of everyone else in the field, then, and could look for the real ghosts. Which they had, admittedly, yet to find.

"If any place we've ever been has been or ought to be haunted by unquiet spirits, it's this one," she said in a voice so serious that he believed her instantly.

"What do I need to bring?"

* * *

Spending two days pretending to be a patient named Roy in a mid-Channel mental institution was not his idea of fun. It was small consolation to see Isabelle in the same predicament, pretending her name was Dale. The food was good, anyway, and he had some books to read, and it wasn't so bad except for the screams and the smells (shit and piss and puke and bleach and disinfectant, God he was ill from it).

A woman in a charcoal grey suit came the second day and looked in at him in his room, and all he had to do was nod and not talk. She asked the nurses questions about "Roy" and they answered mad things: he was born in 2180, he'd been living there four years. The woman smiled at him blankly and made notes on her datapad, and when she went to shake his hand, he did as instructed and he screamed like he was burned.

When the woman left and his room was locked, he spent just a moment panicking, wondering if he really was some man named Roy, lost in time and mad as a spoon, and all his memories were just insane fantasies he'd constructed. He told himself that was silly, he knew who he was, knew who his parents were

His door unlatched. Isabelle poked her head in. "You comin', then?"

Eddie followed her outside into the sunshine.

* * *

"Meet me at my house in half an hour."

"Most people know how to say hello, Isabelle."

"Eddie."

The sleeping form beside him stirred. "Who's that, then?" asked Mindy.

"Eddie, you got a girl at your place?" Disbelief and mirth mixed in her voice.

Eddie sighed. "Isabelle, Mindy. Mindy, Isabelle."

"HI MINDY!" shouted Isabelle through the phone. Unfortunately, it was up against Eddie's ear.

"Oh, is that Isabelle? HE TALKS ABOUT YOU ALL THE TIME."

"I KNOW!"

"STOP SHOUTING!" said Eddie.

Mindy blinked at him, and Isabelle said, "No need for yellin'. Now, give Mindy a kiss and tell her you'll see her in a bit."

Eddie bent over to kiss Mindy when he realised what he was doing. "I will not. Mindy and I are going to stay in bed for another hour, and then I'm goin' to cook her breakfast."

"Make her an egg and tell her you'll see her tomorrow. C'mon, Eddie."

Mindy grabbed the phone from him. Eddie tensed, expecting a row. Women did that sort of thing. "Oi," said Mindy. "What's all this, then?"

He could just make out Isabelle's side: "I need to borrow Eddie today. You can have him back tomorrow. I'll even feed him a steak so he's up for extra lovin'."

"You're not tryin' to come between us, right?"

"God, no. I'm glad he's finally gettin' some. Bit sad when he's not."

"All right." Mindy handed Eddie the phone. "Isabelle's going to borrow you today, pet. Be nice and take me someplace tomorrow."

Eddie said, "Isabelle?"

"Yeah? You comin'?"

"I'm comin'." Eddie was sure he'd been out-manoeuvred and just as sure that it wasn't nearly the last time. He sighed again. "Where're we goin'?"

"I'm gonna show you the end of the world."


	4. Threestep

**Chapter 4: Threestep**

* * *

Jack wasn't sure when they'd chosen Kyle, wasn't sure if he was always the one from the beginning and Jack had been looking for excuses all along to make that happen. If things fell through, he was almost sure Isabelle could pull the plan off, but logically, Kyle was the best option, the easiest fit for the story: fathers and sons, pushing and pulling and never seeing eye to eye. Jack hadn't fought with his own father, not really, not with the little time they had together, but he and his son had been opposites in every way. Jack knew this story.

The day before Kyle said yes, they set two plans into motion.

"Plan A," Jack said, mumbling into Ianto's shoulder. "We convince UNIT that Kyle's on their side, he gets sent on the mission, we seize control at the appropriate time, the first contact goes smoothly. UNIT, impressed with our show, brings him back from the space station alive and well, and all of us miraculously escape prosecution for what are sure to be multiple crimes by that point."

"Here's to Plan A," said Lisa, curling around Ianto from the other side, mostly asleep.

"UNIT isn't going to like it," Ianto said, his face pressed mostly into his pillow. "If it were us, and we found a traitor in our midst, we'd shoot him." A shiver ran through his body, as if he felt the gunshot himself. Jack slid his arm over Ianto's back protectively, remembering another world, another time. This Lisa had never been converted, and this Ianto had never betrayed them for her sake, but they knew the story.

"Then we need a Plan B," Jack said.

"Plan B," said Lisa, yawning. "Same as Plan A, only we get Kyle off the space station ourselves."

Jack knew sleepy Lisa. Sleep Lisa's brain worked differently, and if he pressed the right levers ... "How?"

"Build a transmat. Steal a spaceship."

Jack's eyebrows raised in the darkness. He'd been considering a bribe. "Can you build a transmat?"

"Let me see," she said, and her breathing went regular. Ianto tilted his head over to her and kissed her softly. Jack watched them both until long after Ianto had fallen asleep as well, and carefully, he got out of bed.

Downstairs, he found a notebook and a half-empty biro. He began to write. About thirty minutes in, he went back to the top of the page and scribbled the word "Narrative."

* * *

The problem with stealing the plans for Project Indigo, as it turned out, was that the prototype had been destroyed at the same time as the Osterhagen Key, and the plans had been stored on computers to which the Daleks laid waste. Martha provided what help she could, slipping Jack a copy of the corrupted files and the largest piece of the broken equipment she managed to scavenge from UNIT's storage facility.

"What's this for?"

"Research," and he'd flashed her a grin and kissed her on the cheek and promised he'd bring the family for a visit when time allowed. Before they would have the chance, Martha would make her final official break with UNIT.

"It's not enough," Lisa said, three weeks later. "Tosh did every trick she knows on the data, but it's gone."

"What about the tech?"

She shook her head. "Junk. Why did they destroy it? Rattigan was a genius. We could have used this. Earth could have."

"Martha said the higher-ups argued over it. Rattigan was unstable."

"It saved Martha's life."

"I know." His Martha and this one had both gone back to Francine when the Daleks came. Martha Jones: constant of his universes. "The tech's been turned over to their psychic division. Seems they'd rather develop technology that reacts to brainwaves more than they want something that transports."

Lisa grumbled, didn't comment, went back to the drawing board.

* * *

The problem with sweet-talking Mr. Smith into providing transmat tech was that Mr. Smith couldn't be talked into anything. Mr. Smith's owner viewed Jack with deep suspicion as a matter of course, and chipping past her exterior to convince him meant discovering that Mr. Smith _had_ no transmat tech. He could send signals to other species who did, but his own capacities were limited.

Another two months lost exploring that avenue. They had time, they knew exactly how much time, but the loss still stung.

* * *

The problem with stealing a ship was that there were no working ships to steal, not on this planet. They squabbled with UNIT at every crash site now, and Jack knew he was burning bridges each time he went into theatrics over jurisdiction. He needed a ship, or enough tech for Lisa and Toshiko to build one out of dreams and spare parts.

Toshiko, his beautiful Toshiko, watched him from behind the glasses she wore constantly these days. "Another ship?"

"More scrap."

"We'll see what we can do," she said, and Lisa stayed silent, stayed wary. Tosh didn't know why they were working on these side projects, but every night at home, Lisa drew and designed and calculated until her lips pursed and her head ached, and Jack rubbed her shoulders and whispered stupid things into her hair.

Sometimes he remembered, or thought he remembered, artefacts from the old Archive that could have helped, but the Hub in his memories wasn't the same as the one in everyone else's. Anyway, they'd lost so much in the explosion, on both worlds, that even if it wasn't wishful thinking, whatever he was remembering had likely been lost. That didn't stop him from sending Ianto through what they still possessed again and again, nor from snapping at Johnson when they all came up blank, and never telling her why.

* * *

Ianto's job responsibilities had always overlapped with Lois's, ever since his first day when he'd shown up for work and been informed by his new boss and lover that while business dress wasn't mandatory, he'd best update his tie collection sooner rather than later. His world had been vaguely askew ever since. Jack would, seemingly at random, hand him projects and tasks he'd never encountered, and with that damnable grin, tell Ianto that he had Jack's full confidence. Never mind that the confidence was directed at someone else, someone who'd looked and talked like him but clearly was not. Ianto cursed the part of him that couldn't bear to let Jack down, and then went and did whatever he asked.

Dr. Sheffield had theories about the matter. Ianto had been descriptive about what he could do with those theories.

Jack insisted Ianto would be a natural at organising the Archives, at rewriting history for the bodies they needed to dispose of, at keeping the staff fed and caffeinated, at writing budgets and proposals and reports and crosschecks, at going into the field at a moment's notice to help corral drunken Weevils, and of course, maintaining all this at the breakneck pace at which Torchwood functioned best. At the end of his first week, Lois had taken him down to the pub, and they'd commiserated, and they'd been best friends ever since.

Lois didn't know about the plan. Lois didn't know about the ledger Ianto kept with the meticulously-described details of every illegal action he was committing or considering, along with a careful accounting of the funds Jack wanted him to funnel from account to account. Lois only knew that Ianto handled the Flat Holm budget. It was better that way.

* * *

When the girls found out, they were horrified.

"You can't be serious," said Callie. "You sent him to UNIT _on purpose_?"

"Kyle fit the narrative," Ianto told her. "You both love Jack unconditionally."

"So did Kyle," said Isabelle. "Kyle used to be cool."

"None of that," Lisa said. "Your brother has been playing a very difficult role in all of this." She glanced down the hallway, but the office door was closed. The kids had grown up with alien languages as part of their lullabies. Now Kyle had to learn the K'kltic language in all its nuances. Jack claimed to know enough to teach him. Lisa hoped he was right.

Isabelle sat down on the sofa next to her father, and he put a reassuring arm around her. "I don't want him to go."

"Neither do we," he said, pulling her head to rest on his shoulder. "This is the best way."

"Why can't we just call the K'kltic ourselves? Uncle Jack knows where they are. Tell them UNIT's a bunch of pricks and they ought to talk to us instead."

"Secrecy, lying and backstabbing are why they turn on Earth," Lisa recited. She'd asked the same thing.

Callie said, "So we're going to send Kyle in secret to lie to UNIT and backstab them in the name of openness?"

"We've got a plan," Ianto said. "Everyone is going to see it, all at once."

"How?"

"We're still working on that," Lisa said.

The door to the office opened, and Kyle came out, Jack behind him beaming. "Tell them!" Kyle said something in a series of clicks and sharp noises. Jack clapped his hands together. "Perfect!"

"He's a chipmunk," Callie said.

Isabelle looked down, and away. Then she said, "I want to join UNIT too."

"No," said the three of them automatically.

"Kyle's gonna need someone there to be his friend and to pass information back and forth."

Lisa said, "We'd like to keep the two of you out of it as much as possible. As it is, you're facing conspiracy charges once things get rolling."

Ianto said, "We're in the clear for now, but we've been setting aside money for legal fees."

Callie said, "Are we going to prison, then?"

Jack smiled, but the humour was gone from it. "We'll see."

Ianto's phone rang, and he checked the ID. "Hello, Gwen. We'll be there directly. Yes. Yes. Goodbye." He closed the phone. "She'd like us to pick up drinks on the way."

Lisa got up, while Callie just stared at her.

Callie said, "We're just going to go?"

Jack checked his watch. "We're supposed to meet everyone in less than an hour. If we have to stop along the way, we should."

"But this is important! You can't just tell us, 'Oh by the way, your brother's about to infiltrate a top-secret international organisation and has to pretend he hates us all, let's go for a picnic.'"

Ianto said, "Get your jackets. It's chilly."

"Papa … "

"We're leaving."

* * *

"I've got good news."

Jack looked up from the stack of papers on his desk -- the reestablishment of the London and Glasgow branches necessitated a huge amount of paperwork and for that reason alone he'd put it off for this long -- to see Lisa standing with that edge of giddiness she had when she was onto something.

"I could use some good news."

"We're getting results with the Xerox."

A nervous tingle ran down his spine. "I thought you weren't going to try the Xerox method."

"It's the closest thing we've got."

Jack tapped his fingers nervously. The Doctor was completely out of the loop on their plan, thankfully, but he'd taken an interest the last time Lisa had jerry-rigged the copier into a functional matter transporter, and he'd taken the time to call Martha to tell Jack to stop the project immediately.

"How good are the results?"

"I think we've finally figured out how to change the range. But we'll need to run an actual test. Could we send another tracker through without alerting anyone?"

On his desk sat a single photograph, snapped by Gwen at the picnic. While they had school photos, and the wall at home was graced by a series of professional snaps of the three children together at various ages, there were no pictures of the whole family. Gwen had captured an easy moment at the park, the six of them in frame, even Kyle caught in a too-rare laugh. Jack brushed his thumb over the glass.

"Do it."

"I want to bring Tosh in."

"No."

"She's already helping. She wouldn't betray us. You know that as well as I do."

"You like her?"

"Of course."

"So do I. Let's keep her out of gaol."

"She knows something's up. I can't keep lying to her."

"Then I will." He rubbed his face. "I'm sending her to work at the London branch."

Lisa stared at him. Then she touched her ear. "Ianto, love, come to Jack's office."

Twenty seconds later, there was a tap on the door. Ianto came in and closed it behind him. "This is not a good time for a quickie."

"It's always a good time for a quickie."

Lisa said, "Jack's going to send Tosh to London."

Ianto sat down. "That makes sense. Lois is going to need good people who are loyal to her and to you. Tosh and Mickey have been here for years."

"I'm not going to be able to coordinate with Tosh in London. It's going to cripple our research." She flinched a moment after she said the word, but better to say it here than in front of Toshiko.

"You can teleconference ten hours a day as far as I'm concerned," said Jack.

"She's going to start from scratch setting up her lab, training new people, and oh yes, dealing with real Torchwood business that doesn't involve our side project."

"Then we'll assist her," Ianto said. "You and I can go to London with them to help get things running. We'll stay for a few weeks, maybe a month, so the heavy lifting gets done while Lois focuses on hiring the rest of her staff."

"A month?" Jack asked, looking from one to the other, feeling his chest tighten.

Lisa slouched unhappily. "I still don't like it."

Jack said, "Suddenly not liking this plan either."

Ianto said, "You need to work on new hires here anyway. Tell Andy and Martha they can't start the Glasgow setup until we're back, and spend the time looking for new people."

"When are we bringing Gwen in on the plan?" Lisa asked.

"We're not."

He expected the matching sighs in reply.

"Prison," Jack said. "No." Gwen had survived the various calamities of their lives thus far without losing her mind or ruining her life. Part of him would continue to believe that the world would go on just as long as he could continue to preserve some shred of her innocence. It was for similar reasons that they weren't involving Alice or Steven in this mess. He'd made different bargains with the Devil for the sakes of the man and woman in front of him now, and while they knew it and didn't have any illusions of protesting, he knew that at times like this, the knowledge lay heavy between them and it wore.

"See you in a month," Ianto said, and he held the door for Lisa as they went back to work.

* * *

Ianto didn't have many memories, good or bad, of his first time in London. He'd gone from job to job, temping to the end of each contract and moving on, never really making an impression on any of his bosses, never really taking an impression away. A friend of the family had arranged an interview for him with Torchwood, and the day after his hire he was sent abroad, and that was the end of London. He'd been back since, for the wedding, for visits with Lisa's family, even the occasional meeting with the home office when Lois needed help, but he was a stranger here and always would be.

Yet, Lisa loved coming home. When their work was done for the day, even if it stretched into the late hours, she wanted to take his hand and just walk and see and experience. Sometimes they did. Other times he convinced her that crawling back to the hotel for a few hours' sleep would be more worthwhile. Twice they went to see Douglas and Angie and the girls, but those visits were short, thank God. Lisa came alive here, amid the lights and the crowds, and he watched her glow in a way that normally only ever involved circuits or excellent sex.

They called home every evening, and every evening the kids were fine, Jack was fine, no they weren't sure when they'd be home exactly, see you this weekend, love you, good night.

Mr. Weeds showed up unannounced on Thursday of the first week. Surrounded by boxes and equipment, Lois maintained her equanimity while he checked off items on his PDA. "You should know," he said, "that the King is taking a personal interest in Torchwood's renaissance. We'd like to ensure that all the proper steps are followed."

"As would we," said Lois.

"There is of course some concern with your qualifications to manage a top-secret organisation. Captain Harkness has praised your past work, but he isn't an unbiased source."

"'Unbiased' is not a word I'd use to describe him, no," Lois said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Mr. Weeds had taken on his position when Lois's official job title was still administrative assistant, and it was easy to see he viewed her as an over-promoted secretary.

Ianto and Mickey shared a glance from where they worked. Lisa and Tosh were in the back setting up the new lab space to Tosh's specifications. While joining them right now sounded like a much more entertaining plan than dealing with Mr. Weeds, Lois needed backup.

"Ma'am," Ianto said loudly. "I've put the employment requisitions on your desk for approval as per your request."

"Thank you. Could you please bring Mr. Weeds some refreshments?"

"Of course, Ma'am."

As Ianto headed to the break room, Mickey said, "Nearly finished up here, Ma'am. The monitoring programs are running smoothly." No surprise there. Tosh wrote these years ago. "With your permission, I want to work on the training regimen for the new recruits."

Ianto held his smile until he was safely out of the room, then touched his ear and let Lisa in on the game.

Mr. Weeds stayed for six days, cancelling their plan to drive home for the weekend. Isabelle complained, but since Jack had already told them "give the sanctimonious pencil-pusher anything he needs and get him the hell out of there," he couldn't make an objection on his own behalf.

"Be home when you can," he said instead, and on Sunday night, they set up an impromptu video conference via the laptops because video sex was even more fun than phone sex.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Weeds informed them that the funding for the London branch was unavoidably frozen for the next three months due to the current downturn in the world economy. Lois radioed the news to Mickey, Ianto and Lisa as they hunted a disguised Slitheen in Camden, squirt guns filled with acetic acid at the ready.

By Wednesday afternoon, Jack had managed to get Mr. Weeds fired. His replacement Ms. Peterson took one look at the smouldering green corpse stinking of vinegar, and informed Lois that the accounts would be reopened immediately. The civilian who'd helped them stop the Slitheen from killing his hostage was their first new hire, and a doctor who'd worked with the MoD was the second.

Thursday meant giving the poor sods a crash course in Torchwood policy and procedure. "We had a whole training department," Lisa said, caught in the memory as she went over the charter with Tahir and Janice. Like a compass, she always knew which way to turn to face One Canada Square, although the new office was intentionally nowhere near the old site. "The trainers were supposed to be agents who'd managed to survive more than twenty years on the job. By my time, they were just people who'd kissed Yvonne's arse."

Friday afternoon, Tosh's program spit out a correlation suggesting that the new PM was under mind-control from an unknown extraterrestrial source, which meant all hands, even the new ones, on deck as they tried delicately not to collapse the government again while doing their jobs. As an aside, any weekend plans were immediately backburnered in favour of saving the world.

Saturday evening, Jack, Gwen and Johnson arrived on the scene in the nick of time to provide backup as Mickey shot the PM impersonator while Lois and Ianto found and freed the real one. When it came time for explanations, the eyes went to Jack, who immediately put Lois forward to deal with them. She did so while the rest of them cleaned the area of alien tech (and guts). The traditional pub celebration afterwards may or may not have happened as scheduled; Ianto, Lisa and Jack were too busy back at the hotel to care.

Everyone slept in Sunday morning.

* * *

Jack turned on the camera feed inside his office, the one that only he had the password for. He'd purposefully left nothing on his desk that was directly related to Torchwood, and the boy was nowhere near his computer. Still, Jack wanted an opportunity to observe him when he wasn't sure he was being observed. What would nervousness bring out?

Not much. The boy sat quietly, looking around himself with disinterest, eventually playing with a biro left unattended, glancing at the family photo in its frame.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. "Boy" wasn't the right word. The young man on the screen was probably nearing thirty, give or take the variations between timelines. Jack was simply feeling old today.

"Show me," said a voice behind him.

Jack quirked his mouth humourlessly. "About time you got here."

Mickey didn't reply. He must've broken several speeding laws to get back to Cardiff this quickly. "That's him? Rose's brother?"

"So he says. Rift spat him out three hours ago. We picked him up first."

(_Jack is the first one out of the car, gun not out but at the ready. Sometimes the Rift refugees are so lost in their own madness there's no hope. The young man eyes him warily._

"You're not from around here," Jack says, wearing Pleasant Smile #7: The Reassurer.

"I don't think so, no. I need to get back to London."

"We'll have to see about that. What year is it?"

The young man frowns. "That's not funny. Look, I had a bad turn and misplaced my team. If I could just put through a call, my father will sort all this out. My phone isn't working." He holds out what could be a dead phone and could be a weapon.

"Stop right there," says Devorah from her side of the car. Jack silences her with a gesture, missing Johnson all over again.

Jack says, "Set it down. Everything's going to be fine."

The man puts the phone carefully on the ground in front of him, in classic "I'm not dangerous" pose. "I have something in my coat," he announces with equal care. "I'd like to show you my identification. All right?"

Jack nods his head to Dev to keep her back. If it's a weapon after all, he wants her clear. "All right."

A rustle of clothing, and the man is clutching his wallet in his hand. He pulls out the ID card. "You're not going to understand this, but let's say for now that I'm Special Ops, and I really need to call London to see what's going on." He flashes the ID at Jack.

"Anthony Tyler, Torchwood.")

"You're the expert. You lived in that universe, you knew the family. Ask him things only he would know."

"It's been years."

"You're the only one who can do it."

Mickey frowned. "Fine."

Jack watched on the CCTV as Mickey let himself into the office and took, to Jack's annoyance, Jack's chair behind the desk.

The youth stared at him. "I know you."

"Yeah. Prove it."

The eyes went wide. "Uncle Mickey?"

They spent the next half hour chatting, Mickey careful not to tip his hand or reveal their secrets, Tony careful not to betray his Torchwood in case this was a trick instead of a terrible coincidence. Jack could respect that, even if it did increase his frustration as Tony refused to directly answer certain questions.

When Mickey came out of the office, he said, "It's him. No idea how, but it's definitely him."

Jack nodded. "The DNA test came back positive."

"If you were gonna test his DNA, why'd you ask me?"

Jack shrugged. "Meet a couple of clones and then ask me that." On the camera, Tony had gone back to playing with the things on Jack's desk. Then, deliberately, he looked into the camera, smiled, and said, "Did I pass?"

"I'll go give him the good news," said Mickey.

"What good news?"

"That's he's free to go."

"Is he?"

"That's Rose's little brother."

"My little brother blew up Cardiff and almost killed your wife." Jack watched him, wondering.

* * *

As Gwen shut the office door, Jack pressed the button under his desk for the dampening field. "What are you doing?"

"Lisa installed this a while back. We have one at home, too. Cuts out all electronic listening devices. Screws up my phone sometimes, but what can you do?"

He handed her the file. There were only three sheets of paper in the folder, containing transcripts of conversations. She read all of them completely before looking at him. "You're certain?"

He nodded.

"There's a protocol … "

"We're not following it."

Her eyes narrowed. "You're not planning on arranging an accident?"

He smiled. "I'd like to think of this as an opportunity." He waited until she caught on to his train of thought and then she matched his smile. "I'll alert the others as necessary. Keep it to yourself for now."

"Just another secret?" Gwen had complimented him recently for being so much more open about things. But everyone he'd ever conned had thought the same thing.

"Yeah."

* * *

"I'm not going."

Lisa hadn't slept, not really, in days. Normally Jack was the one out of bed and puttering around the house at odd hours of the night. The past several nights, though, she'd left the two of them wrapped around each other, to tiptoe down to her office. Sometimes she worked on new designs for the transmat. Sometimes she pulled up baby pictures, the three million they took of Callie, the somewhat fewer of Kyle and Isabelle. Sometimes she played one logic puzzle after another while her thoughts wandered. Before morning, often before Jack woke, she'd come back to bed at last, listen to the breaths beside her, and sometimes she'd let her tears fall into her pillow.

Ianto said, "We should be there. They're both going to need us."

She shook her head. "I can't. I can't watch." Jack reached to touch her arm and she jerked back. "Don't. Talk to me after all this is over."

Kyle was going to shoot Callie. Any day, any time, as soon as there was a scene. Kyle would be sent for security, and Torchwood would be there to work the site, and the Good Neighbours would be quietly alerted to another alien encounter, and Kyle would shoot Callie.

She closed her eyes, sat down at her desk, tried not to think, tried not to imagine the retort of the gun, to picture the scarlet bloom on Callie's shoulder. She heard a solid clunk in front of her, opened her eyes to see her coffee mug, vividly red. She took a grateful slug of caffeine. Ianto placed his hands on her shoulders and began to massage the knots he found there.

"Don't," she said, because she daren't say more outside of Jack's office.

"I'll stay here with you."

Guilt buzzed in her stomach. "You shouldn't." I shouldn't, she thought. She should be there for her children. If Callie was going through with this, if Kyle was, they would need their parents. Except that Lisa would be too busy worrying that her daughter was going to die to wonder if her son was going to self-destruct if she did.

"We'll meet them after."

She closed her eyes again.

When the alert came, a doomed Arlani freighter coming down hard in the countryside just outside Hay-on-Wye, Lisa held her breath. When they intercepted the first UNIT transmissions, she shuddered, even as Jack called the team to secure the site. Ianto stepped into Jack's office, and she knew beyond a doubt that he was calling Callie.

Bridget stopped by her desk, kit slung over her shoulder. "Lisa, aren't you coming?"

"I'll monitor from here," she said through the ashes in her mouth.

"Ianto!" came Jack's familiar bellow.

"I'm going to help Lisa. On that project."

Gwen said, "No sex on company time."

"Not an issue," Lisa said. "Call us if you need backup."

Gwen looked at Jack, who merely shrugged, already in his role for the day. "Ronnie, Dev and Bridget are in the car. Let's go."

She listened, as they made the drive to the crash site, as the UNIT troops set up their own perimeter, as the Colonel in charge of the mission made the mistake of trying to pull rank on Jack. They counted five survivors, whose rights were immediately protested for by a "spontaneous" demonstration outside the perimeter.

Over the comms, she couldn't make out individual shouts as the situation deteriorated, and then it didn't matter as she heard the shot, and Gwen screamed over the comm, and Lisa's heart stopped.

Ianto had her coat ready. "They'll take her to Hereford County Hospital," he said, and she heard the ache in his voice. She didn't trust her own, merely nodded, let him drive as the numbness sunk into her bones.

"We're following the ambulance," Jack said in her ear. "Callie's stable. Bridget says they'll operate as soon as we get there. She's still with Gwen at the crash site."

"You should go back," Ianto said, pressing his own ear. "Meet us when the freighter is secured."

"I'm not allowed back at the scene," said Jack. "I threatened Kyle with dismemberment."

Of course he had. The narrative said so. Lisa stifled a laugh, and Ianto glanced over at her. He drove with one hand and held her hand with the other. "She'll be okay," he said, convincing himself perhaps.

At the hospital, there was no word, but they were allowed a semi-private waiting room near the operating theatre. Jack was already there. Ianto fielded the calls from Isabelle and well-meaning friends. The incident wouldn't make the news, so there'd be no word from the rest of the family for now. Nothing from Kyle. Otherwise they sat in silence, waiting to hear if she would live or die.

At last, at last, the doctor came in, and Lisa went to her feet, felt the boys rising beside her.

"Callie's going to be fine," he said. "She's resting now." He went on, talking about the nerves that had been hit, minor damage, some physiotherapy needed, a drone Lisa barely registered. Callie was fine. She was going to be fine.

"I'd like to see her," she said, cutting him off abruptly.

The doctor looked as though he would object, and then his eyes flickered over her shoulder and up and whatever he saw there changed his mind. "Five minutes."

She nodded to the boys, who took their seats again.

The doctor directed her back to the recovery room. Lisa's eyes took in her daughter's still form, the large plaster on her shoulder. She reached out and took the other hand, the one with the tube, bent to place a kiss on the pretty fingers.

"Hey," said Callie in a sleepy, dry voice. Lisa brushed the damp hair from her face. "Did it work?"

"Yes, baby," she said, not caring how much all her children hated that particular nickname. "It worked."

"Good." Callie's eyes drifted closed again, and she smiled.

* * *

**Interlude: Confessions of a Good Neighbour**

* * *

For Callie, everything began with the dog.

When she was six, Papa had taken her to the play park as a special treat one Saturday. She couldn't remember now why she'd earned the treat, or why her brother and sister hadn't, but she later thought it had to do with a plan her parents had concocted and quickly abandoned about spending quality time alone with each of them. Callie hadn't cared about the reason anyway, just so long as Papa spun her around on the whirligig.

Other kids came and went as she played, and then a knot of them were gathered around something. When Callie had wandered over to see, she'd found them petting a puppy without a collar. One of the bigger kids had a stick and was poking at the puppy's eyes while it shied away. The boy laughed, and Callie had yelled at him to stop when he made contact and the poor thing yelped.

About that time, the parents waded in. The boy hadn't come with anyone, which meant the glares and orders did nothing but make him smirk. Papa finally pulled out his phone to call the coppers before the boy stopped and sauntered away. Callie bent back down to pet the puppy.

"We can't keep him," Papa had said, and Callie had gone pop-eyed because that was exactly what she'd been thinking.

He did relent enough to let her knock on a few nearby doors, shyly asking if anyone had lost their dog. More than one face that answered the door had been attached to a hand unable to resist patting Callie's curls while her father scowled -- all the parents got upset when people played with Callie and her siblings' hair even though they did it, too -- and held the puppy. None of them said yes.

"Now can we keep him?"

"No." But they took him home so Papa could find the number of the nearest shelter, and Callie allowed Isabelle and Kyle to pet him while they waited (outside, Mama insisted). Callie was permitted to ride along to the shelter, and she gave the puppy a last, sad hug before she (Papa hadn't checked nearly closely enough) was put on a leash and taken away.

On the ride home, Papa explained that it wouldn't be fair to a dog to live with them, that with all of them gone all day, a puppy would be lonely and likely to get into mischief. At the shelter, he said, people who wanted to love a dog would be able to find her and give her a proper home.

"We could have let her go."

"And perhaps someone would have taken her in, and perhaps she would have grown up hungry and had puppies of her own when she was still little. With strays, you find someone to take care of them, and you do the best you can by them, because no-one else will."

And she'd still cried a bit that night, but the following week, Papa had let her ring up the shelter and she was told the puppy had been adopted, and she'd felt a little better.

She'd found a kitten the next day.

* * *

Callie's flats were easy to locate, when she had a place of her own. They were surrounded by neighbourhood cats, all of whom would find or had already found their way into a trap and went off to the veterinarian for a snip. Feeding strays was part of her job, she'd decided, long before the Good Neighbours were even established. There were always aliens passing through Cardiff, thanks to the Rift, and while many of them ran afoul of Torchwood, plenty just wanted to keep their heads down and find a niche here on this out of the way ball of rock.

Officially, she was a linguist. She'd majored in languages, studying every tongue she had the chance to, and begging lessons off Uncle Jack in languages no-one else knew. As Cardiff was a port city (in more ways than one) the Assembly always had need for translators. It was a good fit, and the Mayor's office liked to think it was taking as much advantage of her influence with Torchwood as was actually happening the other way around.

The Neighbours were something different.

That started with a blowfish couple, ready to spawn and needing a place to stay after the condemned tower block they'd been using was finally demolished for civic improvement. Callie's roommate in uni had just dropped out, and she had a spare room, and sure enough, her parents had gone spare when they found out. Then they bargained.

Aliens were not all bad, Uncle Jack was the first to admit. The Doctor could just about do no wrong in his eyes, and anyway, Uncle Jack occasionally claimed he wasn't 100% human himself, due to a great-great-grandsomething or two. No tentacles, he swore, when Auntie Alice hit the roof at the revelation, and Callie never ever knew if he was joking. Torchwood had captured and studied him, once upon a time, so he knew both ends of the system, and he'd always tried to make the whole thing a little less evil.

But it would help, Uncle Jack had told her, if there was officially another organisation holding out the helping hand. The current bosses at UNIT didn't like Torchwood, and would be more than happy to claim alien conspiracy as a reason to dismantle and envelop the small institute. Another group, a grassroots, ad hoc, volunteer-run, hippy-dippy -- he went on in this vein for some time -- alien fan club would be ideal, springing up in the name of extraterrestrial rights and speaking up for the aliens who had no legal standing in the British or any other legal system.

"I like it," she'd said, and the Good Neighbours had been the welcoming face of interstellar contact ever since.

She'd gone recruiting, finding idealistic students dreaming of first contact, and enlisted the long-distance help of a few veterans who'd met at least one alien in particular: an older couple, named like birds, who sold books and films; the last survivor of a group that had called itself LINDA; select others like herself who were born from those whose lives the Doctor had touched. They had signs and placards to carry at wrecks, they had secret chatrooms and codewords, they had silent funding from a Torchwood account when necessary, and Callie had more than enough strays to feed and water and look after (and occasionally neuter).

She supposed, if Kyle was going to get to save the world, this was the next best thing.

* * *

"How are you feeling?"

She made herself smile, though she was getting tired of the question. Michael meant well. Of course he did: he was one of their loudest and most fervent members, and he was studying law to act as legal representation in the cases they were going to eventually have to bring before the courts, and also he loved her. Still.

"I'll be fine," she said, and she tilted her head up to kiss him as he leaned over her hospital bed.

"I just … I can't believe he did it."

"Don't judge him." Judge me, for making him do it. Her shoulder ached, which meant the pain meds were wearing off again, but she didn't intend to flinch and let him find something else to worry about. "How is everyone?"

"Worried about you."

"Tell them I'll be fine. I'm getting released this afternoon. I'll stay with my parents for a couple of days, let them spoil me. You can stay over if you want."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea." He'd only met her parents thus far on the opposite side of a picket line. Uncle Jack had shouted at him at least twice.

"They'll be fine with it. Just call first." She lay her head back down. "How are the Arlani?"

"They were debriefed by UNIT on the site, but we got them to a safehouse."

"Which one?"

"Beta." Fred's mam's house.

She nodded. She'd let Mama know when she came back, so they could keep an eye on the "secret" location.

"I love you," he said, and he kissed her again.

"I'll see you later," she said, because she wasn't ready to deal with love, not with Michael, not yet.

"He seems sweet," said Mama, after he left.

"He is."

"Should I start paying attention?"

Callie attempted to shrug and discovered what a bad idea that was. "Ow. He's all right. He thinks he's in love with me, which is a bit … You know."

"Hm. Do you like him?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you might like him more as time goes on?"

"I think so."

"And he was willing to say he loves you even before you were dying, in danger, or the world was otherwise ending?"

Callie laughed. "They're not that bad."

"Not now. But I'd had a sword to my neck before your father could be arsed to say anything, and well, you've heard the other story before, too. Stories."

"Are all men really that … "

"Stupid? No. But if you find one who doesn't need the extra kick in the backside to get it right the first time? It might be worth seeing what else he gets right."

* * *


	5. The Fastest Way to a Man's Heart

**Chapter 5: The Fastest Way to a Man's Heart Is Through His Sternum**

* * *

Jack answered the phone. "Mickey! Give me some good news."

"Tick bloody tock. You can call it good news. Your second ace is in the hole. And now that I say it out loud, that sounds phallic."

"Could be phallic, could be yonic. Works for me."

Mickey made a noise that could have been disgust, annoyance, or many other things. He said, "Are you sure about this?"

"You're the one who trusts him."

"I do. But you don't, and the more people you bring into this, the bigger it gets. Someone's going to leak."

"Have you told Toshiko?

There was a pause. "Yesterday. If I'm gonna be all Secret Squirrel, she needs to know I'm not off shagging someone behind her back."

One more on the conspiracy charges, then. "Are you going to tell Lois?"

"No."

"Okay. Figure out a contact schedule with our second ace. I'll let you know what you need to tell him when."

* * *

"How's the transmat coming?" There were times Jack bounded into her lab like a large floppy dog. This was one of those times. "Ready for the organic test yet?"

"We're still sending the test objects, sir," said Pejman. Jack's eyebrows twitched at the "sir." The new blood had a habit of starting out calling Jack "sir" and Gwen "ma'am," and most of them dropped it as soon as someone took them aside and explained that certain members of the staff did indeed call Jack "sir" and those people were also married to him.

Lisa said, "I think we'll be ready for an organic sample by the end of the week."

"What's the hold up?"

"We'd like not to kill a test subject just yet."

"Okay." Jack pulled off his coat and flung it across the back of a chair. Lisa winced, but despite the threat, he didn't actually knock over anything sensitive when it landed. Then he stepped into the transmat test area. "Send me."

"Sir," said Pejman, "that's not advisable. We're still seeing molecular irregularities in the canisters."

Jack ignored him and looked directly at Lisa. "You're going to need a living test subject eventually, right? I can save us the price of a lab rat."

Lisa shook her head. "We're not ready. I'd rather not see you have to come back from being atomised."

"How long? Time's a wasting."

She shut her eyes. As codewords went, this one was both ridiculous and utterly useful. "Let me spend the rest of the day on it. We'll test tomorrow."

"Fine."

* * *

Ianto tapped his datapad unhappily. Not for the first time, he wished he'd been with Torchwood Three during the time of the old Hub, back when the Archives had contained every piece of alien tech found by the Cardiff branch since its inception. So much had been damaged by the destruction of the Hub, so many items and files lost, and he wanted to believe something they'd found, somewhere at some time in Torchwood's past, could be used in service of Plan B. The other him would have found something already, he was sure, had it not been for the whole being dead part.

He heard the lift door open and glanced over. Lisa had a deep frown on her face, and her fingers were doing that nervous dance on her thighs that never meant anything good.

"What's happened?"

"First, I want you to calm down and remember that everything's going to be fine."

"Lisa … "

"Pej and I just blew up Jack."

Ianto took a deep breath. She'd been right: his first impulse was to panic, but as she'd said, in Jack's case, this more counted as temporary inconvenience than insurmountable devastation. He told himself to focus on the current crisis. "Messy?"

"A bit."

"Get the bucket. I'll get the sponges."

* * *

The outer phone rang, and Jack absently counted, waiting for Ianto to pick it up. When the count reached six, Jack frowned, pressed the proper button on his own phone, and said, "H3, Harkness speaking. What do you want?"

Partly he was hoping Ianto would yell at him for his manners and not make him answer the phone again. Gwen had taken Pej out for some field training, and he thought Bridget might have gone with them; he hadn't seen her in over an hour. Lisa was in her lab. She was always in her lab these days. In better times, the opportunity to be here with just the two of them would have been a great excuse to go through the office supplies, but Lisa was still upset with him over what had been Callie's idea, so the stapler game was completely out.

"Hello, this is Cardiff Royal Infirmary. We've just admitted a patient who carried a card with instructions to contact this telephone number in case of emergency."

Jack knew that card. They all carried them now, after Ronnie's unfortunate incident with the Retcon, and poor Julia. But the voice on the other end said "patient" and not "corpse," so he wasn't as worried as he could have been though he still had to swallow to calm his nerves. "You did the right thing. I'll contact our physician and have her meet you there. Is it a gunshot, a bite or a slashing wound?" If Gwen and Pej had run into trouble …

"None of those," said the woman, sounding shocked. "Mr. Jones has had a heart attack."

Jack dropped the phone to the desk and was out the door. "LISA!"

* * *

He knew better than to think the waiting was the worst part. Jack had lived through the worst part more than once: it was holding Tosh as she bled out, it was getting the news by replaying the damned comm recordings that Owen wasn't coming back from the power plant. As for the rest, he had almost successfully blocked out that hellish week with the 456, replaced his memories as well as the events, could make a not-entirely-sane call at odd times to hear Steven's voice, could reach out from the midst of a nightmare to find Ianto there beside him, warm and alive and sound asleep. Jack would take waiting over the alternative any day.

Lisa sat in the stiff vinyl chair, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed. Maybe she was praying. He didn't want to disturb her if she was. She'd yell at him, and anyway, she said it made her feel better. He settled for pacing, nervous energy spiking through him and rendering him incapable of holding still. His mind resolutely avoided the thought that this was it, that the next time he saw Ianto, he'd be as quiet and cold and dead as when …

No. Not thinking about it. And definitely not remembering what had happened before, what he'd made not happen, how Gwen had sobbed and he'd just held her and not thought about anything in the entire fucking world because any thought in his head would mean acknowledging that the cooling form on the floor was never going to wake up.

"I'm going to the canteen," Jack said, instead of screaming. "Get some tea. Or something." He bounced on the balls of his feet, as if testing the gravity of this planet all over again in case he needed to escape, and he scratched at the leather on his wrist. "Come with me?" he added in afterthought, and then, "Want anything?"

"Jack." Her eyes were still shut. Maybe she was going to yell now. But she didn't sound like yelling. "I need you to do something for me."

"Sure."

"When you leave, if you leave, make it right after the funeral." Lisa opened her eyes, and she wasn't crying, but it was only a matter of time. She didn't look at him. "I can't … I'd rather break everything at once than have to wonder when you're going to go."

The nervous energy abandoned him in one go, barely left him upright. "What?" He'd broken up with plenty of lovers, but never while he awaited the news whether another was going to live or … Was going to live.

"I mean it." She turned to him, and now he could see the tears at the edges of her eyes, and without thinking about it, he sat beside her and his arms went around her. Lisa held still. "It's like a plaster. I can face it all at once, but the little inching away every day, wondering when it's going to be over, that's not something I can deal with now. Promise me. Please, Jack."

"Do you want me to go?" Please say no. Oh please oh please.

She shook her head, and he felt the tension inside himself uncoil, just a little. "But I don't want you to stay with me just because you think you should."

"I promised I would stay as long as I could. We all did." Other relationships used the word "forever" in their promises, based on the fact that none of them had any inkling of what it meant.

"That's not a reason. If you're only with me because you said you would be, then I don't want you here. You love him."

A hard reply came to his lips, and then faded away again when he really looked at her. Lisa wasn't stupid, and Jack had absolutely no right to assume she was, or resent it when she proved him wrong when he forgot. Ianto was the centre of their triad, had always been, and without him, Jack wouldn't have ever known the amazing woman his first Ianto had once nearly burned down the world for. She'd become a perquisite instead of an obstacle. And after time …

"I love you."

"I know. But it's not in the same way, and it's not as much, and if in a year or in twenty years, you would rather be somewhere else with someone you love more, I don't want to watch you tear yourself in two because of a promise you really made to Ianto while I happened to be in the room. I can't."

Lisa had set out a minefield in front of him, made up of things they'd all privately agreed to ignore. The wrong words, or not finding any at all, and everything they had would explode. The piece of him that revelled more than it should in the cold bastard role wanted to slam his foot down hard just to see the conflagration as it blew. This was not the conversation he wanted to have today.

Instead, he pulled her closer. "If I have _ever_ made you feel less loved than him, I am so sorry."

"You never have. But we both know it's true."

"Truth? I can do that. I think." He tried a soft laugh, but it wouldn't come. Why was the doctor taking so long? It seemed like hours without an update. "I wouldn't have gone after you without him. Too much baggage from the other timeline." Lisa shivered in his arms. "And I'd have missed out on one of the best things that ever happened to me. I'm not going anywhere, not as long as you'll have me." He traced the edges of her ring with his index finger.

He felt her shake again, but a few of the lines of pain etching her face relaxed. "We're going to lose him, aren't we?"

He couldn't answer.

His phone rang. He disengaged to check. Gwen. Not the best person to talk with right now, but work never paused, even on a death-watch. He stood as he answered. "Yeah?"

"Any news?" Her worry filled the line, for Ianto, for them.

"Not yet. Did you get hold of the kids?"

"Edward and Isabelle are on their way over now. Callie will be there tonight."

"Thanks."

The pause on her end lingered. "I called UNIT."

Oh damn. "Gwen … "

"Jack, I'm not getting involved with your family drama. But Kyle's his son. He has to know."

"I really wish you hadn't done that." Not for the reason Gwen thought. He'd already sent word to Mickey, who would make contact with Tony, who could then break the news to Kyle instead of his finding out from some nameless UNIT lackey. But Gwen couldn't know, not without being brought in on the rest, and he wanted her safe.

"It's done. So you can probably expect a call from him, if he doesn't come. Try to be civil."

Now would be a perfect opportunity to rail against Kyle, and he found he just couldn't. Not with his world falling apart, not today. Kyle would come, and Jack would play his part then, cursing and shouting until Kyle left without seeing his father. They'd need a plan to bring him in quietly after the show.

The double doors opened.

"Gotta go." He closed his phone.

"Oh God," Lisa said very quietly, and Jack reached for her hand as the doctor came over to them.

"You're Mrs. Jones?" she asked. Lisa nodded. "Mr. Jones is in recovery now. The bypass went as well as could be expected. Obviously, we're going to monitor him closely over the next few days, but considering his age and relative health, if he survives the next twenty-four hours, he's got a solid chance at a full recovery."

She sat down on Lisa's other side, occasionally taking in Jack with her words but obviously thinking him a friend of the family rather than anything else. "He was very lucky to have been brought in so quickly, but he's going to have to make a number of changes at home. His diet, the amount of stress in his life. When he was brought in, someone mentioned Special Ops."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Which is why he's gonna need a private room. National security. I can have the PM on the line in thirty seconds."

Lisa squeezed his hand. "Not now."

The doctor nodded. "I'll see to it. But as I said, that's going to have to change."

"I'll have a talk with his boss," Lisa said.

Jack asked, "When can we see him?"

"Mrs. Jones can go back right now. All other visitors will have to wait until he's more stable."

Jack and Lisa exchanged glances. Lisa said, testing the water, "Our children will be here soon."

"And they'll have to wait until he's stable, as well."

"Go on," Jack said. "Tell him … Well, he knows."

Lisa nodded, and she followed the doctor back through the double doors as he watched and tried not to let the fear overwhelm him again. They weren't out of the woods.

"Uncle Jack?" He turned, and Isabelle and Eddie were there, and then his arms were full of sobbing daughter and he didn't have room to be afraid anymore. Eddie hung back, his hands shoved into his pockets, and Jack gave him a nod in thanks for bringing Isabelle.

"It's going to be okay," he said, stroking Isabelle's back as he had when she was a baby. "It's all going to be okay."

* * *

Jack shushed Kyle and Isabelle into the room and locked the door, then clicked the button on his pocket device to jam any internal cameras or microphones. He did a quick check of the flowers on the windowsill, looking for bugs and finding none, fingering the card on a bouquet from Alice.

Kyle went to Lisa first, and her breath hitched as they embraced.

"About time you got here," Ianto said, voice slurred from weariness and medication.

"Traffic," Kyle said, his lips twitching and his eyes threatening tears as he took a seat by the bedside and grasped his father's hand. "There was a Harwood's truck in the way." Ianto smiled.

Isabelle said, "Tony and Eddie are waiting downstairs." She looked at Jack accusingly. "You never said Tony was gorgeous."

Jack shrugged. "He's pretty. I wouldn't say gorgeous. Good muscle tone," he said thoughtfully.

"You couldn't have had him sign up while I was still there?"

Callie said, "If you could both focus … "

Lisa said, "We need to re-evaluate parts of the plan. On our end, we've been working day and night and getting nowhere." She looked at Ianto. "If you stay on the project, it'll kill you."

"I'll be fine."

The sea of stares back at him disputed this claim.

"We're already in," he said, slowly. To Kyle, he said, "You're going to get the assignment, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Plan D," Jack said. "I want you to teach Tony everything you know about the K'kltic. If we can get you both there, you've got a higher chance of success." Kyle nodded. And if Tony ended up being the one to go instead of Kyle, while they would try to get him back, that was just slightly less of an issue, wasn't it?

Ianto said, "We can still build something."

Lisa said, "I didn't want to say this, but I feel like someone or something is stopping us there. Jack, you said the Doctor was adamant we didn't have transmat technology on Earth yet. Did he say why?"

"No. I'm sure it's a timeline issue. We'll figure it out," he said. "I've got a few more backup plans brewing."

"Anything we can do?" Callie asked.

"Keep distracting UNIT. When they're looking at you, they're not spending as much time looking at us."

Lisa looked at Jack. "Speaking of … "

"Yeah."

She said, "Stay away from the Hub. And you," she said to Isabelle, "do not mention a thing to Edward. Lie to him, threaten him, do what you have to do."

"You think he's gonna tell?"

"We'll see," said Jack.

After, when Kyle and Isabelle had gone out through the back again, and Callie went for coffee for the rest of them, Lisa sat back down beside Ianto.

"You can't fire me," Ianto said to Jack. "I can still do my job."

"I have a new job for you. And it's going to take a while. I'll tell Gwen it's busy work."

Lisa said, "Tell her it's therapeutic. She'll be happier with that."

He nodded. Then he sighed. "We need to talk about Plan E." He went to Ianto's other side and stroked his head. "When you're home, when you're a little better, I'm going off-world."

Lisa's head whipped around as the heart monitor jumped up. "You have to say this _now_?" she hissed.

He bent in, kissed Ianto gently and took the rebuke in his eyes as payment. "Not now. Not for a while. But we've only got a little over two years left." He looked at Lisa. "If you're right, and someone's stopping the transmat project, we need another option. We'll need a ship. I'm going to see about buying one. Or stealing one. We are going to get Kyle home."

He rubbed his wrist strap. As long as he had that, he could signal ships, hitch rides, stay in contact, however thready, with the loose conglomeration of traders and merchants in this area of space. While he was out there, he might even find a way to fix the transporter function on his VM, and there was another solution to more than one problem.

"I'll keep working on the transmat," said Lisa, watching his hands. "We're so close."

Ianto said, "I'll help."

"No," said Jack. "You're going to be in charge of Plan F."

* * *

The nice thing about being them was that when Jack sent everyone else home except for Lisa, the others would assume they were staying late to have sex. That wasn't totally inaccurate; Ianto's doctor said he wasn't cleared for at least another week, and it was unfair to him to have to sit things out when they fooled around at home. Tonight wasn't about a groping fumble by the copier, or a longer, more intense evening in one of the spare rooms, though.

The Archives were huge and echoing down here. They'd recovered only so much of the original files and items from the wreck of the first Hub, occasionally made attempts to excavate the deeper, buried sections, and it all came here to be stored under Ianto's watchful eye. Creeping around without him felt like trespassing, and she found herself huddling a little closer to Jack than she otherwise might, which, knowing Jack, would only make him more likely to suggest this as a nice place for a quick shag before they went home.

"Here," she said, checking her datapad again before reaching for the box. "Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. I've used these before." Jack pulled out two devices, about the size of a chicken egg each, and put the box away. "Let me show you."

He guided her hands over the surface of one egg. She felt the first indentation.

"Press it."

She did, and immediately a light flashed and hummed on the second. Jack deactivated it. A simple beacon, he'd said, but one that provided instantaneous contact regardless of distance.

"It's useless as a communicator otherwise, and we've never managed to hunt down working models of the better tech, but it'll work."

"Can you communicate back?"

"Yeah." He pressed the same place on his egg, and hers lit up in her hands. She found the indent again and turned it off. "There's a second function."

Again he enveloped her hands in his, and together they found a different place on the egg. His hands were warm, and he looked her in the eye as they depressed it. His egg made a mournful whine and flashed like an ambulance.

"An emergency signal?"

"Could be. I've got a simple code for it. While I'm gone, no matter where I am, flash the first one and I'll get back here. That means you've fixed the transmat or found a ship or something's gone wrong and you need me home." He rubbed her hands again. "You can tell Ianto or not, but I want you in charge of it."

"I'm going to tell him."

"Okay." One more squeeze of her hands, and then he backed away, pressed the second indent on his egg. Hers moaned until she shut it off. "The second signal means not to come home at all."

Her stomach twisted and then relaxed. "You're coming home."

"I'll do my best. The plan is for me to be gone for no more than a year. If I can't get us a ship by then, we're not going to have a ship and we go with Plan F." He reached for her again, took her arms. She felt the egg as a lump against them. "But if you find a reason for me to stay gone, you have the means to tell me."

"You're coming home," she repeated, and before he could say anything else to break her heart, she pushed her mouth against his, set the eggs and everything else to one side, told him with her lips and her hands and her body that he was coming home, that he needed to come home.

_Come home._

* * *

Gwen waited until Ianto was seated. "How're you feeling?"

"Better, thanks. I should be able to return to full duty soon."

She smiled. "No worries on that. You run everything in the office anyway. I'd be afraid to see what would happen around here if you went back out in the field. We'd probably drown in piles of our own paperwork."

"Only a little voice coming from within the depths of the pile saying 'Help me!'"

Gwen laughed. "Exactly." Her face settled into a gentler smile. "Are you really all right?"

He knew what she was asking, and without thinking about it, he rubbed his ring. "It's hard some days. But Lisa and I have always had each other. I'm sure it's harder on Jack."

He wondered if he sounded pathetic when he said that, like he was wishing for it to be true. Gwen had known Jack before, back when he'd gone after anything with a pulse. Sometimes he had to remind himself that the original Jack of this timeline wasn't exactly the same person as the Jack he'd married. Other times he had to remind himself that it didn't matter anyway, because the only real difference between them was that his had met the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and lived every day in that shadow.

Gwen still didn't know, and there were days he envied her. The story this time was that Jack had to attend a meeting off-world, something about the Shadow Proclamation reviewing Earth's status. "Stay vague," Jack had said. "Say I tried to explain and kept wandering off into stories." They did.

"I wanted to talk to you about Jack. Actually," she said, glancing at her computer screen, "I want to ask you about the Archives."

"Beth is doing a fantastic job." Their newest team member had originally been hired to take on the front office duties, so Ianto could focus on his more important tasks when he wasn't in the field. While he'd been in hospital, and then home recovering, Beth had found herself in charge of the Archives and all the paperwork, except the budget which, thank God, wasn't currently a priority. Jack probably would have stayed on Earth another two months as long as it meant not turning the budget over to anyone else.

"She is." Gwen wet her lips. "She said she's found some irregularities in the system."

"Irregularities?"

"A Horendi flight data recorder fell through the Rift while you were on leave. Beth went to catalogue it, and saw we had two other Horendi items already stored, but when she went to collect them for cross-referencing, they weren't in the box."

"Could be a problem from the old Archive," he lied. "So many items were lost."

_"The Horendi aren't very advanced, but they've got great taste in adornments," Jack says, playing with the gems in his hand. "I can get a good price for these." He stows them in his pack. "Never underestimate the power of the right bribe."_

Ianto makes a note in his ledger, the real ledger they keep to track every crime they're committing. He takes pride in the fact that when they eventually go to prison, he'll have everything annotated neatly for the prosecution. Sometime he puts notes in the margins with the exact articles of the laws they're breaking, to make things simpler. "Earth price?"

"I could get a couple thousand each on eBay, if I found the right buyer." He pulls out the next item. "This is from the Judoon … "

"You logged the items into the database, so it had to have been after we built the new Hub."

"Are you sure?"

She turned the screen so he could see it. His login, the proper dates, yes. Worse, he saw the list of items. Beth had located nine so far. "These were all she could find. Logged in, never logged out, but missing."

He closed his eyes. "I'll check the cataloguing system again. I know we get ghost files from time to time."

"Ianto."

"I'll fix it." Jack had said if they simply didn't list the items as logged out, there'd be no trace. Of course, that depended on no-one getting the idea to do a physical search of the Archives. Why would they?

"Where did Jack say he was going?"

"Meeting with the Shadow Proclamation. You were at the briefing."

"Only one representative from Earth? And it's Jack?"

He shrugged. "He's dealt with them before." The phrasing Jack actually used was, "And I ran the fuck away," but apparently he'd been in the process of breaking several interplanetary laws at the time.

Gwen gave a sigh. "I love him, too, Ianto, and I understand that you want to protect him. I don't blame you at all. But I need to know if you understand the possibility that Jack just stole the most valuable pieces of Torchwood's extraterrestrial collection with the intent of flogging them."

"You can't be serious."

"You know his background. He's been in charge of Torchwood for years. He knows every piece we've collected, and he's the only one who knows exactly how much they're worth on the interstellar black market. The last missing artefact was found a week before he left. All of them small enough to fit in a rucksack. Ianto, what if he's been here waiting to steal these things all this time?"

She was close, and Ianto smiled inside. Underestimating her was going to be the death of Jack yet, metaphorically speaking. But Ianto was also aware of what she was doing, and this once, he knew how to put out the fire.

He leaned over and placed his hand atop hers. "He hasn't. You know him, Gwen. This isn't a con. It's Jack. He loves us. He would never … "

"Never leave? You weren't here. He left us, twice, for the Doctor. The first time, he didn't come back to us for months."

"He said."

"Did he tell you that he almost didn't come back? That he travelled with the Doctor for almost another two years after that year they rolled back?"

No, because his Jack had returned to his own Torchwood almost as soon as he'd showered after the year of hell aboard the _Valiant_. So he'd said, anyway. "He came back. He always comes back." She pursed her lips, and he said, "I worry, too. But I have to believe he's coming back, Gwen."

She sighed again. "I want to. In the meantime, though, I need you to go through all of our Archives. Use Beth to help. I want to see if anything else is missing."

He nodded. "I'll make it my top priority." He stood.

"Ianto, I want to keep this between us and Beth for now. Tell Lisa only if you have to. If it wasn't Jack, it could be someone else on the team. I don't like thinking that way, but we have to be careful."

"I can stay quiet."

"Thank you." She smiled again. "And about Jack, thanks. I guess I needed the reassurance."

He returned her smile. "We all do."

Ianto headed back to his own workspace. He'd have to hide the rest of the missing artefacts before Beth found them.

* * *

Lisa heard the quiet tap on the lab door and smiled. "Step into my parlour." Ianto came in, a half-smile up in offering for the joke.

"We have an issue." He placed a familiar ledger book on the desk in front of her.

"How bad?"

"Ms. Peterson will be conducting an audit of Flat Holm starting tomorrow."

Her eyes widened. "What's the current headcount on the island?"

"Ten warm bodies under care. On paper, we've named twelve. Staff level is consistent." That sounded right. The annual budget for the facility covered the most basic needs for the number of people in care. One extra headcount's allotment could be funnelled back into the overhead budget for the site, covering repairs, unexpected expenses and even the occasional treat for the residents and nurses. The other was used for their side project. Since the entire thing was under the "discretionary spending" portion of the budget, Jack said it'd all even out. But Jack wasn't here.

"We need two more residents."

Ianto nodded. "Who, I should add, can mimic symptoms of severe trauma, who aren't known personally to Ms. Peterson, and who won't ask questions or otherwise betray us."

One name came immediately to mind, and her mouth quirked, even as her heart gave a tug. She'd wanted to keep the girls out of this, and yet they kept coming back in. "You know who we need to ask."

Ianto tilted his head, then let out a sigh. "I'll make the call."

"She's going to have to ask Edward to help."

"I know. I'll tell her to keep him in the dark."

* * *

A year stretched to fifteen months with no word. Lisa took to standing outside at night, gazing up to the sprinkle of stars visible here in the city, wondering. She kept the egg with her all the time, in her coat pocket, sitting like a paperweight on her desk, perched like an extra alarm clock on her nightstand. The egg was her talisman, her tether to the unknown that was Jack.

Ianto didn't need the charm. When she wasn't working, or watching the stars, she watched him as he recovered, as he worked on his own part of the project. Her Ianto, who'd been this puppy she'd met at work, had now gone completely grey. (When had that happened? Her own hair was still dark, thanks to her hairdresser, and her face almost unlined, thanks to her mother.) Somehow he'd found faith in something other than himself, and had constructed an iron-clad belief system around Jack. Jack would come back to them. He had no room inside him for doubt.

In the dark, Lisa doubted. Gwen had recovered from her fear that Jack's whole life with Torchwood had been a sham, and Lisa was certain it hadn't been, but inside her heart, she wondered if he hadn't had enough, if he hadn't given enough to this adopted world. He belonged among the stars, and now that he was back out there, perhaps he would decide to kick the Earth dust from his boots. She couldn't blame him.

And things were … easier. Like this.

The rare times she talked to her brother, there was an ease between them now. "Jack's out of the country on business. It'll be several months," and she knew as she said it Douglas would assume there'd been a row with his "roommates," or trouble with the law. But the words meant she heard the smiles in his voice a little more often. As crazy as he made her, she'd missed those.

Torchwood had never allowed for much of a social life for any of them, and for years, the children had taken up what was left. Now, only Isabelle stayed with them, coming and going as she pleased, and the little free time they had after work, and their project, was actually and honestly free. Still rare, still precious, but they could go out to dinner, or to the cinema, and while people stared (people had always stared, people were people, and people were stupid) not as many stood there with the mental wheels clearly turning, trying to suss out who was with whom. She'd missed that, too.

With Ianto snoring softly into his pillow beside her, she reached out to the egg. Two buttons, two possible answers, both selfish, and Jack had entrusted her with the choice.

Two lives.

One life where she could call Kyle tomorrow and tell him the whole thing was off, and she would have her family back the way it was years ago, and they'd be no stranger than anyone else, except for the job where they hunted aliens, and they'd been doing that for ages.

One life where nothing was certain, and everything was up to the word of a man who was light years away, and might never come back.

She pressed.

* * *


	6. The Ballad of Tony Tyler

**Chapter 6: The Ballad of Tony Tyler (The Wit and Wisdom of Jackie Tyler Remix)**

* * *

They closed out the pub. Kyle had never spent a night out with mates before, not like this. He stole Christa's trick and ordered all his drinks watered down with juices and sparkling water, so at the end of the evening, he was pleasantly buzzed instead of drunk off his arse. Tony grew louder as the night went on. Kyle grew nervous around midnight, wondering if this was really a good idea. What if Tony spilled everything while he was drinking?

Tony, however, was more interested in the women at the table next to theirs, convincing them to join their group. Kyle found himself with a pale, bouncy thing named Linda sitting in his lap for about an hour before she got up to dance with Tony and then Harmon. She tried tugging Kyle's arm, but he hated dancing in front of people, and waved her off.

After the bouncer urged them out, Tony invited the last four of them back to his flat.

"You have your own place?" Harmon asked, his breath reeking of beer.

"I like space. I'll pay more not to listen to you lot wanking next door." Tony unlocked his front door, flicked on the lights, and only because Kyle was watching did he see how steady his hands were. Tony wasn't drunk.

Trevor ran to the loo as soon as they were inside, and Kyle perched on the sofa beside Spitz while Tony went to his kitchenette for a few bottles of lager.

"Who's this?" Harmon asked, grabbing a photo from the wall.

"My parents."

Kyle leaned over to see a standard Torchwood cover story job. Two bland faces smiled out from the frame, carefully digitised and altered to look like they might be related to Tony. Dad always did great work on photos when he was creating a cover.

Tony snagged the frame from Harmon's hands and gave him a lager. "Sam and Annie Tyler, dead these past four years." He saluted the picture as he placed it back where it belonged. Kyle took a large swallow to cover his laugh. Dad also watched too much telly, and was an unabashed romantic when he did. Mum and Jack would sit at one end of the sofa, enjoying the shooting, while Dad perked up whenever the characters started to kiss. Then he explained that the kissing led to sex, and he was all for that, and then Jack would cheer on the kissing scenes as well while Mum rolled her eyes and waited for more explosions.

"How'd they die?" asked Spitz, who was if anything even less subtle than Harmon.

"Car accident. I don't like talking about it." Pretty standard cover, then. "Mum always said, 'Don't dwell on the past, or the present will bite you on the arse.'"

"Hear, hear," said Spitz, whose own past was pretty murky according to rumour.

Kyle kept an eye on the picture. Fake though it was, it had been faked at home and for his benefit, and was like a present he wasn't expecting.

Harmon said, "What's the matter, Jones? Trying to figure out what real parents look like?"

Kyle made a fist in his lap and very slowly relaxed it.

Tony said, "Question for you, Harmon. Is your reverse digestive tract part of your medical records? 'Cause with all the shit you talk, you should get that checked out."

The bottle was nowhere near his mouth this time, and Kyle broke out in a laugh. Tony grinned.

* * *

"I move every three months or so," Tony said, as they manoeuvred the sofa down the stairs. "I sell off all the furniture about every third move. It's harder to keep me tracked that way, and if there's a bug, I'll get rid of it."

"You don't think," Kyle said, huffing a little since he had the bottom of the sofa, "that's a little … extreme?"

"Captain Paranoia is all for it."

"Captain Paranoia isn't helping … you … move."

They set the sofa on the ground floor, and with a shared understanding, immediately sat in it, taking a rest. "I don't have direct contact with him. My contact is the Mouse."

Kyle stared at him. "That's seriously his codename?"

Tony flashed him a grin. He did that a lot. "Nope. Just my nickname for him when he's not around. Catchy, though. I have to stop myself from calling him Uncle."

Kyle tried to picture Tony growing up with stories of brave Uncle Mickey. "They ever tell you about Jack when you were a kid?"

"Of course. Cautionary tales, usually. But John started telling me the better stories after I got caught behind school with my hand down Davy Michaels' trousers." Not a story Kyle had expected to hear.

"What's he like?"

"Who?"

"John. He's the Doctor. Kind of. Right?"

"Yeah. He's … Just different. I like him. Rose thinks he hung the moon and stars, and maybe he did. They lived with us, you know. It was like having extra parents." Tony stood up, stretching his back. "Let's get this out to the lorry."

* * *

Tony was friendly to everyone, Kyle learned. He coaxed Spitz's story out of him, how the military hadn't been a choice so much as his only option. He spent hours playing billiards with Trevor, teaching him geometry without ever mentioning maths. McGann -- she was gorgeous -- spent half the nights at their favourite pub singing up front with Tony on any old song they could find in common. (The Beatles had happened on Tony's world. The Rolling Stones hadn't. Only a fraction of Tony's music overlapped with anything anyone had heard here.) Harmon came out with them infrequently, but Tony shot him down with a word and a smile every time he acted like an arse, and that was all the time.

For Kyle, it was the first time he'd really had mates, and having no idea what to do with them, he sat back and watched, and pretended to drink, and laughed at Tony's constant stream of jokes.

Young officers had different jobs to do than enlisted. Kyle still found himself doing guard duty, but just as often, he was put to work helping the scientists reverse-engineer whatever the latest piece of alien tech was. "Your experience," said the Colonel, which meant his Torchwood experience, "will be invaluable." Tony's Torchwood experience would have been invaluable as well, had anyone known about it, but Tony kept quiet (about that) and was busy with the million and one admin details which couldn't be entrusted to the enlisted soldiers.

"You're being watched," Tony told him one night as they played a video game at his latest flat. His character on the screen shot an alien threatening Kyle's character. "I saw the orders when I was supposed to be putting something away."

"Not a shock." Kyle blasted a barrier out of their way. Funny. Half the games on the market were designed to mimic what people thought their jobs were like, but Kyle had only participated in one firefight in his whole career. Stupid Daleks.

"Your quarters aren't safe."

"Never thought they were."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"I've had to … " _Blast._ "Assume I've been under surveillance … " _Double blast,_ and the doors to the alien headquarters flew wide. "Since I was ten."

"Mum always said, 'If people are going to watch you, make sure you know what they're looking at.'"

"Jack always says that too."

They played in silence for a while, except for brief spurts of, "Over there!" and "You go that way." Tony's new place wasn't as large as his last flat, but it felt cosier. The fake picture of his fake parents hung on the wall, watching them.

"You always call him Jack."

"Hm?"

"Your sisters … Watch out! Good shot. Your sisters call him Uncle Jack, but you don't."

"No." He didn't tell Tony why for months, not until after their rush to the hospital, after Jack had turned them away at the front, only to let Kyle in through the back and kiss his head and remind him he was loved.

* * *

"Wondered when you'd get here," Mickey said as Tony slid into the chair opposite. The pub was crowded and dark and far enough from either one's usual stomping grounds that they were probably safe.

"Project went late," Tony said, and ordered the same thing Mickey was having. "How's things?"

"Good. You can tell Kyle his dad's comin' home tomorrow."

Relief washed through him. Information had been sparse since they'd last seen everyone. "He'll be glad to hear that. I guess that's put some plans back."

Mickey nodded. "Good guess. Tosh is off the project. Himself wants her to focus on making you a dimensional transporter, get you home."

The waitress came back, and Tony flirted with her until she had to go to the next table. "I knew he wanted me gone," he said, taking a sip of his drink. "I thought he'd worry about that later, though."

"That's what we thought." It came out "fought," the way Rose always said it, and Tony felt a twinge of homesickness again. Mickey said, "I think we're on Plan G, for 'Get You Home.'"

"I like Plan G." Around them, the noises of the pub were comforting. The next booth featured an animated discussion about rugby. Two women at a table close by were laughing over a film they'd apparently just seen. Tony faked his way through conversations like that, trivia he didn't know. Part of why he enjoyed Mickey's company, and Kyle's too, was that he didn't have to pretend so hard. "You ever think about going back?"

Mickey sat back in the booth. "Think about? Sure. I'd love to see your Mum again. Rose, too. Sometimes I miss my mate Jake and your Dad. But my life's here. Tosh's here, and she'd never go. So I'm stayin'." He took a long drink, and his face went faraway, with a smile Tony couldn't place. "It's more fun here now."

Tony knew the stories, knew that when the Cybermen came, Mickey had helped Dad with the resistance. Together they'd rebuilt Torchwood from the ashes, a completely different organisation than the one in this universe. Dad, and then Mum and Rose, made their Torchwood an institution filled with checks and balances, with John as the ultimate check. In comparison, Jack's Torchwood was run by Jack's whim, and organised solely because Gwen and Lois took one look around the old Hub after the explosion and decided things needed to change.

"To fun," Tony said, and clinked glasses.

"Another thing to tell Kyle. Word is Himself is going away for a while."

"Where?"

"Won't say. Well, did say, but it's bollocks so who knows."

Kyle was going to freak out. As much as the rest of them were embroiled in this, it was all ultimately Jack's baby. Without him at the wheel, steering however distantly, Kyle was going to feel even more lost. "I'll tell him."

Mickey shared a little more work gossip: a photo of Lois's daughter, the latest failures of the new kids at the London branch He chatted about their extended family of sorts, people who weren't Torchwood but who for various reasons, usually relating to the Doctor, were in their circle. New hires at London were always assigned the task of quietly monitoring a wealthy but otherwise normal woman until she invariably noticed and harangued them loudly. Sometimes a Donna rant was all it took to break a new employee and make him or her beg for civilian life again.

"Why are you bothering her?"

"We're just keeping an eye on her, sort of thing. She's an old friend. Doesn't remember us, and that's how it has to be."

Tony nodded. "Why didn't they ever develop Retcon back home?" His home, he amended mentally. This universe was Mickey's first and last, however much he felt like a long-lost friend from the other one.

Something flashed in Mickey's eyes, and then he said, "Jack invented it. Or stole it." He drained his glass.

They paid their tab when the waitress came back, and embraced in a manly, back-patting hug, which Jack always made fun of Mickey for when he wasn't in the room. As always, Tony held on an extra second, wanting that last connexion to home. As always, Mickey said, "Be good. Give Kyle our love."

* * *

Tony loved paper records, loved the feel of stiff photocopies in his hands, loved also the knowledge that no-one could tap into his searches when he did them himself. When he found relevant files, he wrote everything down on a small notepad, which he could leave for Mickey in certain drop-off places they prearranged.

He found Kyle's psychiatric records during one search, and read them for fun while keeping an eye on the door. His evaluation was exactly what Tony would expect: moderate Oedipal issues, attention-seeking middle child behaviours manifesting in obedience to respected authority figures, some evidence of mild autism spectrum disorder. Kyle had told him about the first two, about sitting up late at night with his father over a couple of psychology textbooks, figuring out exactly what to say when questioned, and the attention to detail was no doubt helped by the third trait. Tony could picture them, perched at the dining room table with cocoa and notes, trying to build a pretend psyche just as Kyle's dad had later constructed Tony a pretend life.

Of course, Mum always said that if you pretended to be someone for long enough, you started believing it, too.

Tony put the file away, and went back to work.

* * *

New flat, new sofa. Kyle missed the old one already, as he tried to get comfortable. He spent the night at Tony's when possible, playing games, watching films, or just sitting around and talking. Plenty of nights, Tony invited their teammates over, or brought home random people he met at the pub, or both. Life of the party he was, and he had a knack for bringing people together. His friends, and Tony was fast friends with everyone he met, became Kyle's friends, and Kyle was as used to falling asleep on the settee with two other blokes as he was stretching out there alone. Tony always got the bed, naturally, though if he took someone there with him, it was almost always on the nights Kyle was back in the barracks.

Tonight they were alone, and they'd gone over K'kltic greetings again. Tony wasn't as good at the language as Kyle, but he hadn't grown up believing this was the most important thing he'd ever do, either. Tony paused mid-click, and he laughed his way through trills, and God, Kyle hoped they never had to rely on him as their primary translator or the war would begin right then.

That particular thought was keeping him awake tonight, that and the stiff leather of the sofa. What if this whole plan, this series of plans, was simply rushing them all headlong into the same fate? What if he was the one who started it all?

A light went on under the door to Tony's bedroom, and then the door opened. "You okay?"

"Was I breathing too loudly?"

"If I say 'Yes,' can we get to the part where I ask you if you want to play cards?"

"Sure." Kyle sat up, and Tony dealt out a hand. Gin. "Give me the formal greeting."

Tony sighed and whistled.

"No, you just called me the son of a whore."

"Well, everyone's met Jack."

"Try again."

He whistled, and got the trill at the end right. "Better?"

"Better."

They played, as the hours went by. Kyle needed sleep, he did, but this was restful in a different way. Tony's constant moves weren't for his own benefit, but for Kyle's: Kyle was safe here.

"So what's Christa like?"

Kyle shrugged. "She's nice. Smarter than she acts."

"Not what I meant. You know, what's she _like_? Moaner? Screamer?"

He drew a card. "None of your business."

"Okay. Just making small talk."

"Yours might be small."

Tony laughed, and they kept playing. "If I guess right, will you tell me if I'm hot or cold?"

"No."

"You never let me have any fun."

"That's me, no fun at all. Are you going to sit there all night or draw a card?"

Tony drew and rearranged the cards in his hand. "I'll tell you stories if you tell me. Come on, what's the fun in pulling if you can't brag about it to your best mate later? Like, Baker's got this trick she does with her tongue … "

"Stop. Baker dated Isabelle and I don't want to know."

"Now there's a wall I'd kill to be a fly on. Tell me you wouldn't shag Baker if you had a chance."

"Dated my sister."

"Fine, back to Christa."

"A gentleman never kisses and tells."

"You're no … " Tony stopped, and he put his cards down, and he stared at Kyle. "You never shagged her."

"It wasn't in the plan."

"She's gorgeous."

"That she is. Some of us have self-control."

"I don't see why. Word is she was crazy about you. Should've taken the chance to ride that ride."

Kyle let out a snorting sort of laugh and grabbed the card Tony had just discarded.

"Fine," Tony said. "Can I at least have a ballpark figure?"

"Of what?"

"Notches on your bedpost. I'm curious."

"You're a pervert."

Tony grinned. "Yes I am."

Kyle steadfastly ignored him, focusing on the streak of red in his hand.

"You're over here all the time, mate. It's put a crimp in my dating. At least give me something to fantasise about in my priestlike state."

"Oh now I'm definitely not saying. I'll stay home tomorrow night so you can get back to your social life."

Tony played with a card in his hand, and then discarded it. He fanned the rest of the cards, tapping them against his lower lip as he watched Kyle intently.

"What?"

"As I live and breathe. You're a virgin."

"And we're done." Kyle put down his cards and started to pull on his coat. "I'll get a cab."

"You don't have to run off. Sorry. Didn't know you'd be embarrassed about it."

"I'm not embarrassed. It's just … I've been in on this since I was a child, all right? And anyone I was involved with would either have to go before the plan came through, or would have to be hurt with me after. That's not a good thing to do to someone."

"Your folks tell you that?"

"God, no. They probably think I'm as loose as … "

"As me?"

"Yeah." He sat back down on the sofa, coat in his lap. "You can't tell them."

"Lips are sealed, me. But it's not some deep, dark secret."

"No? If I went home and said I just shagged a giant alien cat, they'd be fine with it. Mum would say, 'That's nice, dear, bring her around for dinner.' Dad'd ask if I wanted him to add another box of condoms to the list when he went by the shops. And Jack would go into a five-minute reminiscence of this time he had an orgy on New Earth which would probably end with the three of them ducking upstairs while we pretend we don't know what they're doing."

Tony laughed, and then broke off. "One of your sisters shagged an alien cat, didn't she?"

"Isabelle. I'd have expected Callie, but there you go."

"My sister married an alien. Family's weird."

"Mine's weirder. Jack rewrote the timeline so Mum and Dad lived."

"No way."

Kyle shrugged. "It's one of those stories you grow up hearing, like how your parents met."

"My parents met when Torchwood London in your world broke a hole in the walls between universes, everyone ended up in our universe, and Mum and Dad decided to have a go at it even though they'd widowed each other the first time around."

Kyle stared at him, and yeah, that sounded like the little bit he'd heard about Rose's family. But it was one thing to hear the story, and another to comprehend that the guy sitting next to him was also the product of a skewed timeline, sparked by the same awful day. "That's messed up."

"Yeah. Beer?"

"Beer."

* * *

"How about her?"

"Too busty."

"There's no such thing as too busty," said Tony.

"There is. Go in for a snog, and she pushes you back with her tits, I don't think so."

"Fine. I'll go after the one with the tits. She's beautiful."

"Of course you will."

"How about that one? Pretty face, hardly any chest at all."

"Too thin."

"You are killing me here."

"I mean it. I'd feel like I was going to snap her in two every time I gave her a squeeze."

"But look at her! Hair just right for running your fingers through, great mouth."

Kyle waved his hand idly. "By all means, go forth."

"I am determined to get you laid."

"You are not my pimp, Tony."

He sighed dramatically. "Okay, how about that guy over there? Those denims don't leave anything to the imagination, but I'm not complaining. And those shoulders … "

"I don't fancy men." Though he did have nice shoulders.

"You are impossible to please."

"I have standards."

"So do I!"

"'Breathing' is not a standard."

"I think 'breathing' is an important standard." Tony's eyes drifted back to a blonde in a tight skirt. "See, she wouldn't be half so sexy if she were dead."

But at the end of the night, none of them went home with him, and Kyle slept on the sofa again.

* * *

**Interlude: And Now You're Back From Outer Space**

* * *

The inner door to the Hub opened. That'd be Beth with lunch. Ianto finished the last line of his report, which was really Dev's report but if things were going to be done properly, he'd have to be the one to do them, wouldn't he? "I hope one of those is Meat Feast."

"Oh, too many responses to that," said a familiar voice. "But aren't you supposed to be on salads and no sodium?"

Ianto was already out of his chair, and Jack was kissing him, both sets of hands wandering over the other, looking for changes, for injuries. Ianto already knew he wouldn't find any, but Jack's right hand cupped his chin. "This is new," he said, as they broke.

"Hides the wrinkles," Ianto said. Lisa liked the beard.

"I like it."

"Good."

"You're late," Lisa said, and Ianto turned to see her standing in the doorway to her lab, face set in relief.

"I got a little delayed." Ianto took a step back and Lisa piled into Jack's arms. Ianto kept a hand on his back, not wanting to break contact yet as he watched them kiss, as Jack wiped a few stray tears from her eyes. Already the others were piling out of offices, and this was going to turn into a scene.

Gwen came over for a hug and a "Where have you been?" and soon Jack was hugging everyone, only to be met with Beth's shocked squeal when she came in with the pizza (and Ianto's steamed vegetables).

"I'm not back at work yet," Jack said, when the initial clamour faded.

Gwen said, "Are you just now planetside?"

"Less than an hour ago. I hitched a ride. Need to get my Earth legs back."

"That's fine," she said. "Take a few days. We're just glad you're home."

"Good. And now, the three of us are taking the rest of the day off."

Lisa said, "That's not a good idea. I'm in the middle of something."

Ianto said, "I'm halfway through a stack of reports as tall as you are. There's really … "

Jack grabbed a hand each. "I haven't had sex in eighteen months. We are going home now."

Lisa turned to Gwen. "Emergency."

"Back tomorrow," said Ianto, shutting down his computer.

"Probably not," said Jack. He bent in and kissed Gwen on the cheek. "Call if the Rift explodes, or we get invaded. You know the number. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. Maybe Friday."

And before she could object, they headed out. As the door shut, Ianto heard Beth ask, "What are we going to do with all this pizza?"

* * *

"The hard part," Jack said, several delightful hours later, "about stealing a ship is that the ship's owners get really tetchy and they start raising a fuss about legalities, which wouldn't have been a problem if they'd just sold it to me like we'd originally arranged."

Lisa said, "You said you hitched a ride." She rested her chin on her arms as she lay on her stomach. Jack was pressed up warmly against her all along one side. From the other side of him, she saw Ianto's hand trace patterns over Jack's chest, magic sigils to hold him in place. Jack spent the better part of an hour learning the scar over Ianto's heart after they'd sated themselves the first time.

"I did. Had to break out of prison first. That was fun."

She heard Ianto inhale sharply. "How long?"

"The sentence was for another couple of years, Earth-wise. And there was the matter of my list of prior offences. That reminds me. I should avoid chatting up the Judoon anytime soon."

"Did you die?" Lisa found it less upsetting than Ianto seemed to. He always fussed, wondering if this would be the last one, if Jack really didn't want to come back from the darkness this time. But he always did, and every time, Lisa felt a strange surge of pride. Her man, fighting the fight all over again. And still she wanted to know.

"Couple times. Don't worry about it. I'm home now." He leaned over and pressed his nose against her elbow, lips already curving into another playful smile.

* * *

They made it back to work on Saturday.


	7. A Life Without a Glippy Is No Life

**Chapter 7: A Life Without a Glippy Is No Life At All**

* * *

When the Colonel announced the training program to the small room of hand-picked soldiers, Kyle nearly panicked. He suffered through by breathing slowly and reminding himself that, just because he'd been waiting for this all his life, this was no reason to freak himself out with thoughts he wasn't going to make the cut.

"All of you will receive the training," the Colonel said. "Half of you will be chosen for the mission at the end. The others will be in reserve."

Tony kept his eyes fixed on the Colonel the whole time, nodding in the right places and saluting when necessary. He and Kyle would be competing against each other for a place on the team, but their skills didn't overlap enough to have to compete directly. Small blessings. They could train together.

"This species has given us a rubric and a glossary. All of you will be trained in what we know of their language and customs. I cannot stress the importance of this training enough. One missed word, and it could spell disaster."

Spitz, ever the lightning rod, raised his hand. "Sir, will the mission have any civilians on board? Some brainiac like Professor Smith?"

Kyle let the warmth pool in his stomach. He'd met Luke several times in his childhood. God, if they'd bring him along, Kyle would be glad to step down.

The Colonel's glare at Spitz silenced that hope fast enough. "No civilians are involved. This is strictly top secret UNIT business."

Spitz was not present at any further trainings. Harmon was, though, another eager face in the crowd jostling for the chance at going into space, and his specialties did overlap with Kyle's.

"They'll take you," Tony said over cheap takeout and between rounds of Death Blast. "You've got alien contact, and you're a better engineer than Harmon."

"Harmon's got a degree."

"Yeah, but you know what you're doing, and he bullshits his way through. Whereas I'm a paper pusher and a loyal grunt. Anyone could do my job."

"If you'd practise the language more, they'd choose you."

"So let's practise."

* * *

Tony sat in the last booth of the dark pub, checking his watch. Mickey was late. That wasn't always a bad sign, at least not for him. Torchwood never did keep regular hours.

"You're late," he said automatically as the body slid into the seat across from him and before he registered that it wasn't Mickey.

"I'm getting that a lot lately," said Jack.

"You're not supposed to be here."

"Sometimes I like the hands-on approach."

"Keep your hands to yourself. I know where they've been."

Jack flashed him a smile. The waiter came by, and he ordered a water, gave the man an appraising eye as he walked away. "You and I haven't talked in a while."

"Mickey's my contact. Has he had any problems with me?"

"Not a one. He sings your praises every chance he gets."

"He's good people."

"Yeah he is. He's my people, and I only choose the best."

"Except for the spies and the traitors."

"Exactly."

"And you're not sure if I'm one."

The waiter came back with Jack's drink. When he was gone, Jack said, "No, I'm not. You're convenient, I'll give you that. Show up right when we can use someone who's untraceable."

"But you think it's all too much of a coincidence."

"Yeah."

"So do I. But I grew up with all this. Stories about you, about Mickey, about Canary Wharf, and then I find out it's the centre of a whole pile of coincidences and timelines."

He paused, letting his words sink in.

"Kyle told you about that?" Jack said.

"We have a lot in common. There were more survivors in my universe. The ones that lived, their kids were called children of the Tower. Stupid, but there you go."

"I want to believe you. That's the worst part. I want to think you're on our side, that you're working with us because you want to, and part of me thinks that's why I'm letting you do it."

"But?"

"But I don't know your angle, and it's killing me. Figuratively speaking." He took a drink. "I've worked cons and jobs and I always had an angle."

"Is this just another con for you?" John had been pretty specific about Jack.

"No. This is my family."

"I'm not going to betray him. There's no way I'm going to be able to make you believe it, but it's true." He'd known that for years.

"If you do … "

"You'll kill me?"

He laughed. "I'm a lot more creative than that."

"I'll bet." Tony took a tasteless sip from his glass. "Did you come here just to threaten me, or was that something special on top of regular business?"

"Something special. Mickey's up in Glasgow. Andy's run into trouble with the damn monsters in the lochs again. You can give your report to me."

"Fine. The training is going well. Kyle's got it wrapped up. The only thing counting against him is you, and that's in his favour this time."

"Thought they were worried about his social skills."

"I took care of it." The guys thought Kyle was a good bloke, bit quiet but nice, exactly as Tony intended.

"Fine. When do we find out about you?"

"Soon enough." Two more days, and Tony wasn't going to be on the list. His only hope was that someone already chosen would fall ill or break an ankle or something. He might have to arrange it.

* * *

They met up in the canteen at lunch. Tony smiled when he saw Kyle with a tray, but the smile didn't go to his eyes. "Give me some good news, Jones."

"The news is good. You?"

"Standby."

Kyle sat down, careful with his tray and his utensils, and he didn't let his hands shake. "I'm not sure I can do this alone."

"You're going to do fine." Tony smiled again, and Kyle felt his confidence even if he didn't share it.

"Will you help me practise?"

"Sure."

They peoplewatched for the rest of lunch, trying to guess by the faces who was accepted and who wasn't, though Kyle would find out soon enough afterwards when they piled into the briefing room this afternoon. "Oh yeah, she made it." "Ouch, that's a no." By the time he was finishing his food, Kyle was laughing again, his nervousness buried for the moment by Tony's impression of Harmon grumbling about his results.

As Kyle stood to take his tray back, Tony placed his hand over his. "You're going to do fine," he repeated, and Kyle believed him.

* * *

Tony's latest flat was close enough to base that they could walk. Back home, when he'd moved out of his parents' place, he'd found a flat where he could see the Tower if he wanted, and he'd walked every day. The building where he'd lived didn't exist on this world, had been demolished during some invasion or another long before his arrival. Sometimes he forgot how alien this London was to him, found himself walking down streets he knew, only to come across buildings and parks and landmarks that simply shouldn't be there. He missed the statues of the Presidents, as pompous and covered with bird shit as they'd been. Like a tourist, he looked all around, constantly refamiliarising himself with his surroundings as Kyle walked beside him, oblivious to this strange world.

The worst things were those that were right, that were familiar. They stopped for chips on the way home, and Tony shivered when they walked through the door.

"What's wrong?" Kyle asked, getting in the queue.

"Nothing."

"Very convincing."

"I used to eat here all the time." Behind the counter, Mr. Sharma served up hot fried food with his salt-encrusted spatula, smiling through false teeth. He'd moved here fifteen years ago and built his restaurant up from the ground, and he had four daughters, and he supported Manchester, and none of that was something Tony could bring up with his because Mr. Sharma here was a stranger. And this happened all the time, and he never knew when he would turn the corner and see a face he knew who didn't know him, and sometimes he could scream.

"Go sit down," said Kyle, watching his face. He shoved Tony towards a booth, and then ordered for both of them. When he came back, Tony had stopped his hands from shaking. "Let's eat while we walk, yeah?"

"Sounds good," said Tony, and without looking back, they headed back out to the street. "Thanks," he said, when they were a block away.

"Did he die on your world?"

"Not when I was there. I'm just still not used to it. Seeing people."

Kyle said nothing, chewed his food thoughtfully. They crossed the street, and finally he said, "I think it'd be nice, knowing that somewhere, there's other places where people got it right, where they took the other road and made it through."

"Yeah." Dad's life had taken two vastly different paths. Mum's too. But he could tell Kyle wasn't thinking about that. "It's going to work out."

"In some universe," said Kyle. "So we've got that."

Back home, Tony made Kyle go over his K'kltic, but Kyle'd been doing this since he was a kid and he was fine. They played a couple of games, and Tony made a note to sell the system before his next move. He was pretty sure he wasn't being watched, had never found a single trace, but he'd rather stay too careful than miss something.

Nothing was on the telly, but Kyle kept flipping anyway. Nerves, Tony guessed. What had been a potential forever was suddenly coming up in just over a month, and the enormity of their undertaking wouldn't break him, Tony was sure now, but that didn't mean he wasn't frightened. The lack of any word on the matter from Cardiff was ominous in its own way. Either they still hadn't figured out how to get him home, or they had, and it wasn't pretty.

"Go back," Tony said.

Kyle turned back to a bodybuilding competition out of Reykjavik and snorted. "Really?"

"Sometimes they do camera work from behind during the lifts. It's an amazing sight."

"If you say so."

"I have caught you looking. When Trevor bent over yesterday to pick up that spanner he dropped, you could barely keep your eyes in your head."

"I did not. That's not what happened." A flush spread up his cheeks.

"You don't have to keep your cover story up around me, you know that. You're supposed to be all sensitive about the gay thing because of your dads, and I get that, it's as good a story as you were going to get. But Mum always said, don't ever fall for your own hype."

Kyle snorted. "Not an issue. But I don't fancy men."

"Of course not," said Tony, because sometimes he had to humour his best friend even when he was in deep denial about something obvious. Then there were the other times. "But I think sometimes you fancy me. I'd never expect you to say it," he said, ploughing on, "because you've got your cover to preserve, especially now, and it's easy enough to ignore. Lots of people I've fancied and never said anything, because it wouldn't have worked out, or would have messed up whatever we already had. So I get not saying anything." He was babbling a little now, he could tell by Kyle's face, and the way his eyebrows were trying to reach his hairline. "But if you did, then I'd probably tell you that I fancy you right back. That I'm not in this for Jack and his weird plan and never was. I saw this picture on his desk, and it was all of your family together, and you were laughing at something, and I hadn't even met you yet and all I wanted to do was make you smile that way at me."

Kyle still wasn't saying anything, and Tony rushed to fill the silence again. "Which of course would be an incredibly stupid reason to get involved in something that might change the timeline permanently, so obviously I'm on board with the real plan now, and it's only a bit all about you still. And I really ought to shut up now."

Tony felt a stone in his stomach as Kyle sat there, watching his wide-eyed, because clearly he hadn't just overstepped his boundaries, he'd tap-danced his way into the next continent. And then Kyle was pushing his mouth against Tony's, and okay, so he'd spent a little time fantasising about this, but now it was really happening, and all he could think was thank God Kyle had got some quality kissing time under his belt before, because this was fantastic.

He wanted to grab Kyle's arms, run his fingers over his neck and into his hair, and he had to hold himself back because if he didn't let Kyle set the pace right now, this was going to end as fast as it had started. He settled for licking a crumb of salt from the dimple at the edge of Kyle's lip, then pressing the salt inside his mouth, and the sound Kyle made in his throat could fuel Tony's fantasies for a month.

He felt a hand on his, and their fingers moved together, oh so slowly, until their palms met flat against each other. Tony pulled back just enough for breath. "If this isn't what you want, now would be a good time to … "

"Stop talking," said Kyle, and he kissed him again, and Tony shut up.

* * *

Always a different pub on a different day of the week at a different time. Mickey's rule, which just meant that paranoia was the official drink of Torchwood agents everywhere. Mickey was already there when Tony strolled up and took a seat at the table, unable to keep the grin from his face. It was hard enough at work, to pretend everything was still the same. On his own time? No way.

Mickey matched his grin. "You look like you're havin' a good day."

"I am." He wanted to spill, but Kyle said not yet, not until this was settled one way or the other. Bad enough (Kyle always softened that with a warm brush of his hands against Tony's face) that he was so distracted right now. "What have you got for me?"

"The best three devices my brilliant wife has ever invented. With some assistance from yours truly." Tony quirked his mouth. "Okay, and a bit of help from Kyle's mum. But I told you the 'brilliant wife' part, yeah? 'Cause I'm gonna be quizzed on that later."

"You said." God, he was used to being happy, but every joke seemed funnier today, and he let himself feel it.

"First, whatever you do, don't touch this button." Mickey handed him something that looked like a biro.

"What's it do?"

"Gives everyone but the person holding it some pretty nasty stomach problems."

"Ouch."

"Terrorist device, Ranthak Horde. Modified for humans and disguised for travel. You don't want to know how many times I had my head in the bog during testing."

"You're right. I don't." Tony pocketed it, and Mickey handed him a razor, something a man would carry with him as a basic item even into space.

"This one'll take the transmissions on UNIT's frequencies up there and send them to a receiver we've got here."

"Tapping into the signal?"

"And broadcasting it. You met Rani yet?"

"I don't think so."

"Great girl. Spent the last three years working her way up as a reporter for the Beeb. She'll be in place to give the transmission a boost. Big one."

Tony blinked. "Really?"

"Jack says if you think it'll spook Kyle, don't tell him he'll be on the TV."

Tony looked at the razor. "How's it work?"

"Button press. Click and go." And just as hidden in plain sight as the biro.

"Very Bond."

Mickey played with his glass. "I think the girls are having a go at the rest of us."

"You said three toys. What's the last one? Shoe telephone? Exploding beret?"

"Not quite." Mickey pulled something out of his pocket, oval and metallic and nothing at all secret. There was a lanyard attached.

"Okay, I don't get it."

"That's your ticket home, punched and ready."

"What?" Tony pushed back from the table, the chair legs squeaking.

"I remembered how the originals were put together. It's a different power source than what we used before, so you'll only get one hop out of it before it fries, but one trip is all you need."

He was afraid to touch it, so that couldn't have been his hand snaking out to stroke the side, surely it was someone else picking the thing up and turning it over in wonder.

Mickey said, "You won't be able to come back. The Doctor was clear about how bad the jumps were for both universes."

"I remember." John had told him, when Tony had been a child wondering why they couldn't visit the people from the stories. "Mum said these could be used as transmats."

"Short distances, yeah. We can't get Kyle down with it, if that's what you're asking. Tosh n' Lisa spent a couple of years fiddling with the basecode, and frankly the only reason we know it's going to send you to the right place is 'cause I memorised the coordinates back when I was popping back and forth." He shrugged. "Your world's got different tech than this one, couple advances we can't make even though we know what we're looking for just because the right things haven't come along yet. Jack says it's like being stuck in Shakespeare's time. You get the best entertainment but some days you'd give it all up for a flush toilet and a working laptop."

"I know what he means. I tried telling Kyle what a glippy was and he didn't get it." Not entirely true; after Tony had explained, Kyle'd got that look, the one that said he was sussing out the problem in that brilliant head of his. Sometimes Tony wondered who and what Kyle could have been if he hadn't spent so much of his life trying to be someone else.

"You had to have one to understand. Miss mine sometimes." His mouth twisted into a smile again. "That oughta be our next project. Invent the glippy, make a fortune, retire."

"Yeah." He was going home. Mum and Dad and Rose and everyone. "Is there a plan for this?"

"Jack wants you to wait until right before contact. Go in to work like a normal day, duck into the loo, vanish. The UNIT guys know you're friends. Don't want them grabbing you."

Don't want me talking, Tony amended silently. He was the big leak, the spy, and they'd found a place to send him where he was beyond prosecution or questioning.

Mickey slid a couple of envelopes across the table. "I'd appreciate you takin' these with you. Just some quick hellos, couple of snaps. Want to let them know I'm okay."

Tony nodded, and he pocketed the letters. He was going home. God, he was going home.

* * *

Kyle had already ordered dinner, and was just setting the hot cartons on the tiny table when Tony came in.

"How's Mickey?"

"He's good."

"Something wrong?" He frowned. "No-one's dead, right?"

"No deaths, no sicks, no-one's pregnant." He pulled a biro from his pocket. "Couple of toys for you to take with you. Whatever you do, don't press the buttons until you're ready to use them."

"Anything blow up?" Tony smiled, but his eyes were weird as he showed Kyle what to do. "What's wrong?"

"Just getting nervous. What's for dinner?"

"Chicken korma."

Tony gave the two devices to Kyle to stow in his jacket, then hurried to the kitchen. He ate like a starving man, not really that unusual, but he didn't say much and Kyle had never been good at conversation on his own.

About midway through the food, Tony set his down and grabbed Kyle's arm, pulling him in for a messy, seasoned kiss. Kyle considered protesting, and then shoved the food to one side before slipping his hand behind Tony's head for a better angle.

"Come on," Tony said, tilting his head towards his bedroom, and yeah, the bed was so much better than the sofa had ever been, and that was even without the added benefits of Tony's knowing mouth and nimble hands. They pushed and cuffed and kissed the short distance there, and paused only because Kyle was crap at undoing other peoples' buttons so it was easier to get his clothes off while Tony made a very nearly obscene show of his own.

Everything was new, and perfect. Tony had said it was always new and perfect when it was someone fresh, and Kyle decided not to press, decided pressing against him was more fun anyway. In the near future, he was going to have a deeply embarrassing conversation with Dad and Jack about what point he could say, "Yes, that counted as sex," because while the past couple of weeks had been the best of his life, he wasn't sure where blowjobs fell in the scheme of things other than, "Can we do that again? Now?" Tony knew all about this, knew how to touch him, knew what to do with his teeth and his fingertips, knew several fun tricks with condoms (which Kyle had previously thought only had the one use, two if he counted the balloon animals at his fifth birthday party) and he tried not to make Kyle feel bad for not being up to speed yet.

So tonight, as they moved against each other, Kyle chalked up the strange distance he saw in Tony's eyes to a touch of boredom and perhaps impatience. His other lovers had probably caught on a bit faster, had learned what he wanted and anticipated it, instead of trying to keep up, needing Tony's hand to guide where he liked to be touched.

It was good, because the very first thing Kyle had learned firsthand about sex was that it was always good, but after, as they tangled their legs and met in little breathless kisses, Kyle decided he was going to have to fix this. Everything with the project would be done soon, for better or worse, and if he was alive at the end of it, he'd swallow his distaste for the mental image of naked parents and ask for advice. Possibly with diagrams.

Tony made a noise in his throat, so Kyle leaned over to place a kiss there. "What are you thinking about?"

"My mum."

Huh. But he'd just been thinking about his dads, so he guessed it was another one of those things they had.

Another question he'd have to ask, when he had the chance, if he made it that far: how was he supposed to tell the difference between amazing sex with his best friend and love? And what was he going to do if the answer was that there wasn't one? Sometimes Kyle imagined he was climbing a mountain, higher and higher, and the air was so thin and clear that he could see a thousand miles but he couldn't catch his breath, and Tony was there beside him with warm smiles, urging him further up into the sky.

Kyle tilted his head to clear away the image. Really not what he wanted to think about, not where he needed to be. He had a duty, and a plan, and a purpose, and everything was coming to a head, and the rest of his life would have to wait until he found out how this part ended.

He squeezed, just a little, for the reassurance of the warm, drowsy body next to him. It was nice, having something and someone to think about beyond the end of the mission. Like having a future, which was very different from having a destiny. Even if this didn't last, if it was one of those wartime flings Jack always spoke fondly of, he was happy.

Kyle smiled in the darkness.

* * *

"What's this?"

Tony padded out into the dimly-lit room, went to wrap his arms around Kyle's waist, and stopped. Kyle wasn't touching it. A lifetime around alien tech had taught him caution when dealing with unfamiliar devices.

"It's a dimensional transporter."

"Ah." Kyle stared at the thing, held out his hand to measure the size against his palm. "You're going home."

"I … Mickey gave it to me with the other toys."

"Yeah." His face broke into a smile. "I'm happy for you. This is what you've wanted, right?"

"Right."

"I just … " And here it would come, and Tony wasn't sure he was ready. "I didn't think they'd figure out a way to get across universes before they figured out a transmat, you know?"

Not the conversation he was expecting. "Mickey was there when my Torchwood designed the dimensional transporters. He just had to remember how they worked."

"Yeah."

"Kyle … "

Kyle wouldn't look at him. "When are you going?"

"The plan is that I show up for work the day of the mission, so that no-one gets suspicious. I'll duck out around the time you make contact. By the time anyone notices I'm not there, well, they'll be distracted, won't they?"

Kyle nodded, slowly, his sleep-tousled head just an outline against the muted light coming in from outside. "That's a good plan."

"We're up to, what? Plan I? Plan J?"

"Oh, we're at X or Y by this point, I'm sure." He heard the catch in Kyle's voice.

"You don't leave for two more days." It wasn't supposed to sound as much like a come-on as it did.

"Were you going to tell me? That you're going?"

"Yeah. I was. Just didn't know when to mention. Didn't want to upset you." He bit his lip as soon as he said it, because there were only two ways Kyle could possibly take that, and neither of them were good.

"Because it might jeopardise the mission or just ruin your good time?" Ah. He'd chosen both. Splendid.

"I'm just trying to get it wrapped around in my own head," he said. "I didn't know they'd figured it out until Mickey handed it to me. I figured I'd be here for a long time yet. I'm not their top priority."

"Still. Works out for you."

"It's going to be fine," he said. "You're going to do great, it's going to work out for you, too."

He could tell by the tightening in Kyle's jaw that wasn't what he'd wanted to hear, either.

"Look," said Tony. "I never said … "

"No. You never did." Kyle turned and went back into the bedroom. Tony sighed and followed him, stopped short when he realised Kyle was getting his clothes.

"It's too late for you to go."

"It's not even half ten. I can be back on base by eleven, faster if I get a cab. Anyway, I've been trying to stay there more often. People talk when I stay over at yours."

"People always talk. People are stupid."

"But this time, they're right. And I can't afford it. I'll see you tomorrow."

Tony didn't see him out, instead sat down hard on the sofa, glaring at the dimensional transporter.

"Fuck."

* * *

**Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It's Been Clear**

* * *

Kyle stayed on base the last two days. He was polite to Tony when he saw him at work, skipped lunch entirely claiming nerves, and managed to avoid him right up until the end of the second day. Launch was scheduled for six o'clock the next morning, and all active team members were confined to base. They would need two days to reach the space station, and then the meeting with the K'kltic would be on the third day.

No word from Cardiff. Plan A, relying on the goodwill of his superiors after the mission, was not the most comforting thought to have, especially on what was looking like his last night on Earth.

"Hi."

"I'm busy," said Kyle.

"You're off duty now."

"I need to pack my things. I'm only allowed five kilos and that includes my uniform, and they want it by midnight for loading." The team would be shuttled to the launch site then. Tick-tock.

"You always travel light. It can wait."

"Goodbye, Tony."

"Kyle, look … "

"Jones!" They turned, and saw Lt. Singh coming down the corridor. "Meeting for the team in the briefing room."

"There's no meeting scheduled."

Singh reached them, glanced at Tony, and said, "The launch has been scrubbed."

"What?"

"Bad weather, looks like. They're going to try for day after tomorrow." It had been raining all day and he hadn't even registered it.

He felt Tony's hand on his back. "Best go see what that's about," he said, and Kyle met his eyes numbly. If the launch was pushed back, the timetable was off.

"What about our appointment?"

Singh shrugged. "I heard the brass is contacting … " He stopped and looked around, realising he was discussing this in a hallway where anyone could hear. "They're gonna send a message to reschedule. Come on, let's see what they tell us."

Reschedule?

Tony patted his back. "Go. I'll meet up with you later, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Kyle followed Singh to the briefing room, but the rumour mill had been right: no launch, stay on the base, yes the K'kltic were being contacted. Zero hour, a date engraved on his brain for over fifteen years, was changing.

As bottoms dropping out of the world went, this one was a winner.

* * *

Tony sprinted through the light drizzle back to his flat, where he kept the disposable phone, the one he paid cash for and changed regularly.

It rang twice before there was an answer. "Harkness."

"It's Tony. What day does it happen?"

"You know that."

"I don't. The launch was just scrubbed. Everything's been pushed back a day. Possibly two if the weather doesn't clear. They're informing the K'kltic."

There was dead silence on the other end.

"Jack?"

"Where's Kyle?"

"Back on base. The team isn't allowed to leave." He changed hands, put the phone to his other ear. "Tell me we've been doing this right. Tell me you remember."

"Can I call you back at this number in ten minutes?"

"Yes."

There was a soft click. Tony resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room.

* * *

Ianto's comm spoke in his ear. "Ianto, can I see you in my office?"

"On my way."

As he stood, he saw Lisa emerge from her lab looking mystified. They shared a glance, and he heard Bridget laugh. She covered it with a cough as Lisa glared. "Sorry."

Ianto closed the door of Jack's office behind him.

"Tony just called," he said in a mild voice.

"Tony never calls," Lisa said. "He's supposed to call Mickey."

"The launch has been scrubbed."

Ianto found his legs weren't useful anymore, and he sank into a chair. "No."

"They're postponing the meeting."

"Is that possible?" Lisa asked. "We know the date. Right?"

"I thought we knew the date."

Ianto said, "Jack … "

"Do you remember every bit of history you learned in secondary school?"

Lisa thumped her hands on his desk. "If I were planning my life around one of them? YES!"

Jack placed his hands over hers. "As I see it, there are three possibilities."

"Oh good," said Ianto. "Multiple choice."

"It's possible I remembered wrong."

Lisa said, "Possible?"

"It's also possible I remembered correctly and the date I was given was wrong. The calendar changes a couple of times over the next three thousand years. The dating system might be off."

Ianto blinked. As explanations went, it was pretty good. He wasn't as concerned about getting the date right as what it portended if Jack had got it wrong.

"Or?" Lisa said.

"Or everything I remember is right, and the weather clears, and the launch does happen tomorrow."

Ianto said, "It ... " A smile touched his lips. "Chula weather remapper."

"No," said Lisa.

"That would work," said Jack. He spun to his terminal and opened the archive database. "Found it. Last check showed it in working order."

Lisa pursed her lips. "Fine. But I'm operating the thing. Last time we let you test it, we had snow in July." That hadn't been Jack's fault, as Ianto remembered things, but he shared a quick look with Jack to tell him now was not the time to argue the point.

"Done," said Jack. "Ianto?"

"I'll take Bridget for some tea. Let me go out first."

Ianto exited the office and made a beeline for Bridget's desk. She had her own autopsy room in the back, and she was kind enough to spray it down when she was done with something messy, so apart from one thing, they got along well.

"Bridget, let's go to the café. My blood sugar is low, and certain someones," he nodded towards the office, "still don't trust me not to fill up on junk food."

"I can baby-sit," she said with a friendly smile. "I'll even join you in a banana."

"I'd appreciate that."

* * *

Twenty minutes after the call had ended, Tony's spare phone rang.

"Look outside," said Jack.

"It's still raining."

"Just wait."

Tony waited. Then the clouds dispersed with a gust of wind, and late evening sunlight slanted through the buildings, picking out people and cars in golden beams.

"You're good."

"I hear that a lot."

"I need to go. I should say goodbye." He'd been filled with a strange buzz ever since Singh had told them, a feeling that this was going to be postponed, perhaps forever, and he wouldn't …

Anyway.

"Yeah. Give him our love. Tell him we have a plan." A noise came from the other end. "Also tell him his mother is so proud of him she could burst. That goes for all of us."

"I will."

"And Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Tony looked at the dimensional transporter again. "I'll tell Rose you said hello."

He closed the phone. Then he ran like hell back to base, splashing through puddles like a child.


	8. Aliens Came to Greet Our Planet

**Chapter 8: Aliens Came to Greet Our Planet Offering Universal Peace and Harmony and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.**

* * *

Callie's hand drifted over to press against the scar on her shoulder. Beside her, Michael moved in his half-slumbering state.

"So we're going to have to set a date for this," she said.

"Mm hm."

"Not for a while." God alone knew how long until the dust settled, even in the best case. Callie wanted to believe in the best case. "I want Kyle to be in the wedding."

That woke Michael up in a hurry. "You're joking."

"He can be a groomsman."

"He tried to kill you."

She rolled over to face him, watched in amusement as his eyes drifted down her body and up again, was less amused when he settled on the proud flesh at her shoulder. "There's something I need to tell you, but you can't speak about it to another soul."

* * *

Isabelle woke up before dawn on the last day of the world, and lay in bed for a while, listening to the birds and the vehicle sounds from outside, the mutterings from down the hallway. She'd grown up in this room, had lived here since she was a baby, except for uni and then UNIT. If things went badly, hell, even if things went well, they were likely going to sell the house soon. At best, her parents would move into a small flat, easy to maintain and gentle on the mobility issues Mum wouldn't admit she was having with her knee. At worst, even Callie could be brought up on conspiracy charges, and they had no defence other than that they'd listened to someone who claimed he knew the future.

She hoped Eddie would visit her in gaol.

Isabelle groaned. She had to call Eddie, get the day started. Maybe when this was all done, they'd get a place together. About time he moved out of his folks' house too, and anyway, they'd likely be moving as well. Everyone would be. Eddie's little sister was gonna complain, but Jeanie complained about everything, didn't she? Sixteen, and as pretty as her Mam, and Isabelle let her thoughts keep wandering for just a bit longer and then with a sigh, she got out of bed.

* * *

Lois sat back in her chair. "You've got to be kidding me."

Toshiko, whom Lois had previously believed to be sane and sensible, said, "We didn't want to keep you out of the loop. But the more people who knew, the more likely it was that someone would slip."

"Or report you. This is serious. We are supposed to be coordinating with UNIT, not taking over their missions for them." She rubbed her forehead, feeling a familiar headache coming on. "Jack knows we have to operate within certain rules. I think he wrote half of them."

Mickey said, "Yeah. Maybe everyone should've thought that through a bit more. But here we are. It's happenin' today no matter what."

She sighed. "Did he say why I had to be bearer of the bad news?"

"Everyone likes you," Tosh said.

"Give me the file."

Mickey handed it to her, but there was nothing they hadn't just spent the past hour explaining. Torchwood reported to the Crown, and today they had plenty to report, and Jack had saddled Lois with the task. Bastard.

"I thought Gwen at least would have said something." She saw the looks on their faces. "Oh no. Oh. She's going to kill him twice."

* * *

The shout from behind Jack's closed door was unclear but distinct enough for everyone in the office to wince at once. There was another shout, somewhat quieter, and then nothing. Lisa often blessed the soundproofing they'd splurged on. She sat at the edge of Ianto's desk, watching him play nervously with the folders.

"Love you," she told him, and he glanced up with a smile.

"Love you."

Beth came in, grumbling. "What's this about a meeting, then? I'm supposed to get the agenda in advance so we can make copies."

"I handled it," said Ianto, brandishing the folders. Then he said the magic words. "Jack asked me."

"Oh."

Beth still didn't quite grasp the chain of command, which was good because Lisa suspected they didn't really have one. Jack was in charge most of them time, except when Gwen was, and Gwen was always in charge when Jack wasn't around, except when Lois decided she was, and London and Glasgow were supposed to answer to Cardiff, but sometimes they both told Jack to bugger off. Gwen gave the day to day orders, and was in charge of them all, while Jack was the head of the Institute, and was thus also in charge of them all. Despite having retired from active duty, Johnson showed up occasionally and ordered the newbies around, and Jack expected them to listen to her. When Mickey and Tosh were in town, they had automatic seniority over all but Gwen and Jack. Everyone, including Gwen, accepted the fact that Ianto and Lisa were always going to answer primarily to Jack, except when they were annoyed with him, or when Lisa was fed up with both of her husbands, or when Ianto was having A Day. And as the staff physician, Bridget could relieve any of them of duty at any time, including Jack. Lois made a chart once to explain it all to the new people. Before Pej had left, he'd used it as a dartboard. Lisa missed him sometimes.

The door to Jack's office opened, and everyone pretended not to have been eavesdropping. "Okay, kids," Jack said, clapping his hands together. "Group meeting. Tell me someone has doughnuts."

The door to the outer office opened, and Callie let herself inside. Lisa smiled. Show time.

Everyone filed in and took their usual seats. Callie sat down next to Lisa, and Lisa touched her hand as Ianto passed out the folders one by one. Gwen sat across the table from them, a frown on her face aimed directly at Jack.

Jack waited until Ianto finished and took his seat. He gave Ianto a fond smile, and then began.

"On this date in history, Earth makes first contact with a species known as the K'kltic. They're not much different from the other species we've met, which means for us that the first contact is a disaster, a lot of people die, and any excuse humans can find for fighting one another after they leave is excuse enough. With me so far?"

"What did you call them?" asked Bridget.

Jack tilted his head. "The K'kltic. They're from a neighbouring system. Nice enough species. I once dated … "

"Not now," said Ianto.

"Okay. So. First contact."

Gwen asked, "What time?"

"About seven hours from now. There's a UNIT team in position on the space station, where they've arranged to make contact."

Groans went around the table. Dev said, "UNIT? That's going tits up fast."

Jack said, "History agrees with you. Of course, that's my history. It's your future. And in your future, we've got a man in place to conduct the mission who's been versed in K'kltic language and culture."

Beth said hopefully, "Is it Luke?" Beth had a bit of an obvious crush on him.

"Negative, but he's our man on the ground. Our contact is going to put the K'kltic in touch with him, and have Luke act as Earth's representative."

Lisa saw the looks of approval go round the table. Even people who'd never met him admired Luke Smith, and having him as a silent Torchwood asset was one of the better arrangements Jack had ever made. Before Mr. Smith had gone into permanent shutdown, Luke had downloaded everything available on the K'kltic and was almost as well-studied in their language and culture as a native. Jack had arranged more than once for his name to be floated as a possibility for UNIT's mission, and if they'd bitten, Torchwood would already be breathing easier, but they hadn't, and Luke was now waiting with everyone else. Having him on their side for this lent the endeavour some credibility, which they were going to need for this next part.

Bridget said, "You said Luke was our man in the ground. Who's meeting with the K'kltic?"

"Kyle," said Ianto quietly.

Gwen sat still, her frown deepening, but she said nothing as Dev said, "No way."

"He shot Callie," Bridget said, and Callie smiled at her.

"That was my idea."

Lisa said, "Kyle's been working for us on this for years. His entire job has been to infiltrate UNIT and make them believe he was loyal to them for the sake of this mission."

"How long?" asked Gwen, but her eyes were on Jack.

He said, "Almost sixteen years."

"Jesus," said Dev. "You're a sick fuck sometimes, Jack."

"Don't I know it."

Lisa said, "It worked. He's on the mission. They trust him. This afternoon, he's going to make contact."

Jack said, "And while there is still a big possibility that this is going to backfire, and we're the ones who instigate the whole mess, I've just gambled everything we've got on the belief that he's gonna pull this off."

"We're going public," Ianto said. "That's part of what he's going to do. He has to tell them everything, because they can't abide secrets."

Jack said, "Drives them crazy," as he made a circling motion by his ear. "They're telepaths. Secrecy and lies make the K'kltic war-happy. So, we can't lie to them, and we can't stay secret without screwing the pooch, and by pooch, I mean planet. The world is going to find out about Torchwood. Anyone still working for me at the end of the day will be a household name, and not in the good way. Lois is going to hand-deliver the news to the palace right before it happens."

Ianto said, "In front of you, you'll find folders containing new identities for you and your immediate families. We've done our best work on these."

Lisa said, "You did all the work."

"You helped with the names."

"You always name people after characters on the telly."

Jack cleared his throat. "You have the next seven hours to decide if you want to disappear. We're staying," he said, nodding to Lisa and Ianto. "We're in this for the long run. You don't have to be."

Gwen spread her fingers over her folder. "We should have talked about this. You said changing timelines is a bad idea. The Doctor … "

"I'll talk to the Doctor. Anyway, I don't see this as a timeline change. More of an edit."

"How is that better?" He shrugged. "That's what I thought."

Beth said, "Have you told Martha and Andy?"

Jack nodded. "Ronnie took the Glasgow team their materials. He's opening his this morning with them. We've also started contacting our counterparts in other countries as a preliminary measure, though they don't know the full story yet. The Area 51 people do not like getting phoned in the middle of the night, I can tell you that."

Bridget stood up. "I need some air. This is too much. I can't just decide in a few hours if I want to completely drop my life."

There was a click. Lisa watched Jack point his gun at Bridget's head. "You're going to sit down, and you are going to stay here."

Beth's eyes went wide. "Jack!"

Bridget held up her hands, and said soothingly, "This is clearly going too far. You're running roughshod over the rule of law, and now you're threatening me?" She turned to Gwen. "Can't you do something?"

"Certainly," said Gwen, and she pulled her own weapon out and aimed it at Bridget. "I can tell you to sit down and shut up." She glanced at Jack. "I hate it when you're right. But thank you for at least not keeping me in the dark on this."

"You're welcome."

Dev said, "What the hell?"

Lisa said, "Bridget is a UNIT spy. She's been telling them our secrets for years."

"We've been monitoring you," Ianto said, in a weirdly pleasant voice. "We've given you dozens of false seeds to plant, and we've watched you give over every one."

Bridget shuddered. "No. That's not true. Someone's been framing me."

Jack said, "I found out about two months after I brought you on. I almost shot you then, but you've been useful. A few false leads from you, corroborating the spying UNIT thought Kyle was doing for them, it was one of my better plans. We found your UNIT file."

"You couldn't have. Kyle doesn't have access to … " She shut her mouth.

That faint smile again. Ianto said, "Our friend Tony has been working as a file clerk for UNIT. No-one ever sees clerks and underlings."

"We know," Jack said. "So you're going to sit here with us under guard until this is finished one way or another, and if you try to escape, I will shoot you. You are not endangering Kyle. Do I make myself clear?"

She nodded, and folded her hands on her file. "Why did you give me a folder?"

Ianto said, "Your forged records are of an escaped convict. If you'd tried to use them, you'd have been picked up immediately."

"Oh."

* * *

"Jack?" said Gwen sweetly. "A minute?"

Jack looked up from the datapad and had to reset his brain. A minute for what? "Sure." He gave the pad back to Ianto, who offered him a less than sympathetic nod. Jack was going to get the "We told you so" lecture later.

Jack followed Gwen back to her office.

"There's nothing in my new ID for Edward."

"Edward has his own folder. Isabelle gave it to him this morning."

He watched the fear cross her face. "What's going on? You have cut me out of this, and trust me, we're going to have a long talk about it later, but right now, I need to know how deeply you've got my son involved."

"I've kept him safe. One slightly illegal act."

"Jack."

"Which he didn't even know he was committing, so he can claim ignorance when everything comes out."

"Where is he now?"

Jack sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. "Out."

"Out where?"

"We've set up a secure landing area in the Beacons. Eddie and Isabelle are doing the last prep for the site. If things go well, they'll send up the signal for the K'kltic to come down there."

"If things don't go well?"

"Isabelle has everything she needs for the two of them to run to safe ground. If this goes bad, it's going to happen in a hurry. The kids have a head start to get away. Out of all of us, they're the ones most likely to survive."

Gwen sat down. "You really should have told me. Jeanie should be with them. _Callie_ should be with them."

"You can still go. Everything you and Rhys need to start a new life is right there. You can get Jeanie out of here. Ireland wasn't touched in the war, other than some residual radiation."

She shut her eyes. "There has to be something else we can do. Radiation? Why are we not up there stopping this ourselves?"

"We are."

"I don't mean Kyle. I mean us. You know about these aliens."

"I couldn't get up there. We don't have a ship. We don't have a transmat. We can't get up there, and we can't get Kyle down."

"He's going with UNIT. He'll … " Realisation dawned, and he reached out, covered her hand with his.

"UNIT has the same opinion on spies and traitors as we do."

"You let Bridget live."

"We can trade her. By the end of the day, I'm going to have to trade a lot. Look at your folder again. Take an hour or two to think. You and Rhys and Jeanie can be out of the country tonight."

"I'm not going anywhere and you bloody well know it."

He smiled, because it was his Gwen, and yeah, he knew she wasn't leaving. But he had to give her the chance. "Good. Let me tell you about the next part."

* * *

"Thirty minutes of work and we have to wait here all day? I could have slept in."

"Does the phrase 'need to get into position' mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Figures."

"Oh, don't you get all military on me, Iz. You can't even salute right."

"I can so!"

"Can't. You always look like a kid playing with army men."

"You take that back."

"I won't."

Isabelle sulked at him, and Eddie sulked right back. Bloody nuisance, being out here in the middle of nowhere, his feet gone wet from the grass, no-one for miles. Isabelle said they had to stay all day and most of the night, with nothing to do until much later.

"Why do we have to get into position now?"

"'Cause Uncle Jack said so."

"Oh. Good."

"Eddie?"

"What?"

"What's the biggest secret you've ever kept?"

"What? I dunno. Probably that time we stole Mam's car and you wrecked it."

She nodded. "Sounds about right." She turned and went back into the car, digging around for something with her legs sticking out. "Here," she said, shoving a wrinkled and stained folder at him.

"What's this?"

"New life. Papers. ID. Some money."

"What's it for?"

Isabelle sat down heavily on the towel she'd brought. After a moment, Eddie sat down beside her.

"You're gonna be pissed off."

"About what?"

She laughed, and it carried over the rocks and grass. "So my idiot big brother is gonna save the world today … "

* * *

The lack of sleep was catching up to him. He hadn't slept the night before the launch, had catnapped along the way, had spent all of what was technically last night on duty, and instead of sleeping this morning, he needed to begin his work.

Kyle wasn't afraid. He had been, for so long and for so many reasons, but as the Earth had fallen away behind him, he'd felt his anxiety fall away as well. In the idle time he had on watch or when he should have been sleeping, he stared out the closest window and watched the stars. Jack had travelled them, as had Kyle's grandmother, and Luke's mum, and even Mickey for a little while. Someday Jack would be out here again, no doubt piloting some slapped-together ship as humanity climbed out of its cradle and tottered into space. Moonbase. Bowie 1. Bowie 2. And Kyle, here, now, playing his own part, feeling connected for the first time in his life to that greater tapestry.

The station turned, and the Earth peeked out at the edge of his window.

Tony had come back, damp and silly, just as the Colonel had announced that the mission was back on, but the announcement had meant the team was on lockdown. No-one on the backup team was needed, and they were dismissed. There had been waves and shouts and good luck thrown, and Tony had waved and shouted luck with the rest, and given Kyle a thumbs up. Which could mean they'd had a breakthrough, and could mean nothing at all, but as the team filed out and past the others, what it mostly meant was that they'd fucked up their one chance at saying goodbye.

Kyle looked at the biro in his hand, did not click it. The razor was tucked into his boot.

He wasn't coming back from this. He'd been wound up like a toy, trained to do one thing well, and when his spring went, his life was over. A bullet from a mate's pistol today, or an accident in prison later, UNIT was not going to let him free, not now. And Tony, as much as he wanted Tony to stay, had to go. He'd been the one collecting their information on the Colonel's plans, the same information that, if everything was on schedule, was in Auntie Lois's hands as she waited for her audience this afternoon with the King. She would explain just how far Torchwood had overstepped its jurisdiction, and how far certain members of UNIT had, and in what ways, and why, and how Torchwood had just managed to save UNIT from starting an interstellar war, and because it was Auntie Lois, she would do it without shouting. Any influence that bought would be put towards keeping Dad out of prison, for his health, and with luck, Mum and the girls and the rest of their tiny conspiracy.

And that was fine, better than fine. Best case scenario, all down to him now.

Kyle stood and straightened his uniform, then wandered over to where Singh and Baker were watching out the next window. Some of the team were feeling a little unsteady from the artificial gravity. That would mask the real culprit until later, he hoped.

"Hey," said Singh.

"Hey." Kyle clicked the biro beside his leg. Baker went pale, and Singh covered his mouth with his hand. "Are you all right? You don't look well."

Baker said, "Fine. Just a bit … " She sat heavily. Singh leaned against the wall. Kyle helped him to the floor beside Baker.

"Space legs getting to you? I'll fetch the doctor," said Kyle.

* * *

The waiting wore at him. Ianto was quietly certain that this series of events had already taken a good ten years off his life, but the worry now, for Kyle, for all of them after, well, today was going to eat at least another five.

Lisa closed her phone. "That was Tosh. Everything is set on their end. Lois is heading to the Palace now."

"Good."

"Are you all right?"

"As right as I'm going to be." She sat down next to him, and he held her hand. Lisa didn't have Jack's eternal youth, but she was still lovely, her hair as dark as the day they'd met. After this, after all this, if it all went well, if Kyle came home, if no-one died, so many ifs, the three of them were going to take a long trip somewhere, and they were just going to be for a while. No aliens, no plans, maybe a call every other day or so to the children to ensure they were okay and that Isabelle hadn't blown anything up, and otherwise, just peace.

"He's going to do fine," Lisa said.

"I know." He closed his eyes. "Did Tosh say if Tony checked in?"

"He didn't. But the timetable had him set to leave a few minutes ago. If we haven't heard from him by now, we probably won't."

"Jack will be so pleased. I don't think he liked Tony."

"He liked him enough. But I think he'd have been happier knowing why Tony was helping us," Lisa said, her pretty mouth drawn up.

"I thought we decided it was that whole Rose connection."

"Really? So you'd help one of Rhi's old boyfriends from thirty years ago commit treason?"

He frowned. "Not any of the old boyfriends I've met, no."

"If Jonny asked you, you'd likely turn him in yourself."

"That's not … Yes. I probably would."

"So we don't know why Tony has been helping us."

"A chance to get home?"

Lisa hitched her shoulders. "Could be." But she looked unconvinced.

* * *

Rani tapped her fingers nervously on her desk. When she went to lose her job over this, she intended to claim she'd broken the biggest story of the century. Which would look lovely at the top of her CV as she was fired anyway.

The tiny device, hardly bigger than a beetle, sat on her desk. Toshiko said it would signal her at the right time. Rani already knew how to change the feed, had checked and rechecked to make sure this would work. Now she waited, wondering what the signal was going to be, as Tosh hadn't actually told her.

The beetle lit up, and hummed.

Rani grinned. As she dashed to the control room, she thought that somewhere, Sarah Jane was smiling.

* * *

"Mr. Langer, Ealing Southall."

Clyde kept the smile cool and professional. "New business. We need to talk about Torchwood."

Groans echoed through the hall. Dillwyn, the lone MP from Cardiff, hid her face in her hands with a quiet, "Oh God, what now?" that carried.

* * *

On the television screen, Kyle chittered. In English, he said, "You were misled. I am here on behalf of the Torchwood Institute of Earth."

"The who of what?" said Dev, and Lisa shushed her as the aliens whistled, and Kyle whistled back. She knew the language well enough to follow along, and Kyle translated quickly.

"UNIT has been trying to trick you. They wanted you to liaise with them alone, use you for the opportunities you presented. They would have broken the terms of your agreement. Instead, we are speaking in front of the world as you wished. If you read my thoughts, you know I am telling you the truth."

The aliens chittered, something about gratitude, and an acknowledgement of his veracity. Then the feed cut, and they were left with the BBC technical difficulties screen.

"That's not good," said Jack.

* * *

Rani folded her arms as her supervisor tried to shout her into cowering.

"Clear out your desk."

"Biggest story in a century," she said. "And we broke it. Ask me how many jobs I could walk into right now, promising an exclusive interview with Lt. Jones when he returns to Earth."

"How exclusive?"

"I've known him since he was three and his parents owe me a huge favour."

Rani ended the day with a raise.

* * *

Callie's phone vibrated in her pocket. "Excuse me."

Papa said, "You're leaving now?"

"I need to take this," she said, hurrying out of the conference room. "Hello, Charles."

"Shit, Callie, what the hell just happened?"

"First contact, new species. We've done this before." Charles was dating a man from Altair who'd come through the Rift two years ago. Immigration was going to be a nightmare.

"But the man on the telly … "

" … is my brother. Don't worry about it."

"But … "

"Call Michael. We'll be moving out to the landing site shortly. Torchwood wants the Good Neighbours to act as the welcoming committee." More or less. Basically, they were going to greet the aliens, and Callie and Michael would help facilitate their meetings with everyone, though the primary push would be to get them in a room with Luke. "Busy days ahead."

"I thought we didn't get on with Torchwood."

"Charlie, Torchwood has been funding us the whole time. Talk to Michael." She closed her phone.

* * *

Kyle felt the razor in his hand spark and die, and he knew the broadcast was over. He told the K'kltic ambassador, "I am going to awaken my colleagues now. They will not harm you. They may harm me. This is not unexpected. Please do not hold it against them."

He twisted the biro, and the others immediately lost their sick looks, and began climbing to their feet. Resigned, Kyle turned the sound back on for the monitor with the Colonel.

"You have sound again, sir."

"Lt. Jones, you are relieved of duty. Relinquish your weapons, including all technological devices on your person, immediately."

Kyle set down the biro and the razor, and his unused sidearm, as Trevor came over to him. The diplomat, Leeson, was already speaking to the K'kltic ambassador. Kyle was pleased to hear she was being honest about UNIT's intentions. It would likely get her fired later, but it wouldn't get them killed.

"Lt. Trevor, arrest Lt. Jones. Do it now."

Kyle put his hands on his head. Almost apologetically, Trevor cuffed him. Kyle chittered one last time to the K'kltic.

"What'd you say just then?" asked Trevor, as he hauled him away. "Something about wrong talk?"

"I warned them that my colleagues are not as fluent in their language as I am, and will likely give offence, and it's not intentional. I also told them it was an honour to meet them."

"What happens if they get offended?"

"World War Three. Complete with alien enemies and tactical nuclear strikes."

"So if Leeson back there just called their mums whores … "

Kyle stopped dead. "No."

"Well, I'm not as good as you on this … "

"Sorry."

"For what?"

But Kyle had already brought his hands down in front of him. (Cuffing at the top of his head? Really? Trevor was a well-meaning idiot.) With a sharp crack, he smashed his bound fists into Trevor's chin. He had maybe a minute, as the others still recovered from their illness. He dashed back to Leeson and the K'kltic ambassador.

"What did you say to them?"

"I told them they are going to be highly regarded on Earth."

"Did you use the formal tone or the informal?"

"We weren't told the difference."

Kyle had brought it up during the training, and had been told to stick to the rubric. He turned to the ambassador and said in K'kltic, "Again, please do not take offence. She said you will be held in high esteem."

The ambassador made a sound almost like a laugh. "Thank you for clarification."

"It is my duty and pleasure."

"We will not take offence at her words. Her thoughts say she was considering untruth."

"We had orders. She will tell you the truth now." He looked at Leeson and said in English, "You must tell them the truth, always. Telepaths hate liars and secrets. It's important."

He was aware of the Colonel shouting over the monitor, and the rest had recovered. There were five weapons pointed at him, all held by people who'd liked him until today.

The Colonel's phone rang on the screen.

"You should answer that," said Kyle. "It'll be Jack."

He let them take him into custody this time. He didn't bother ducking when Trevor punched him.

* * *

"Colonel," said Jack. "Seems we've got ourselves a situation. I've got a monitor if you'd like to speak face to face."

He heard a growl on the phone, and then the screen in front of him connected. Jack put the phone on speaker.

"You're going down, Harkness."

"So many jokes, so little time."

"I'm sure you think you're very clever. How long have you been setting this up?"

"Oh, quite some time. I'm big on long-term planning, as you know."

"Espionage? Treason? Not your usual plans."

"I'm not the one who intended to use the K'kltic to advance my career. By the way, it wouldn't have worked. Your people up there would have insulted them, and we'd be at war now."

"You know this how?"

Jack smiled. "I'm special. I know." He pushed back in his chair and adopted a relaxed position. "So. Before you and I are both arrested, we should talk. What are you going to order them to do with Kyle?"

"I'm not sure it's worth spending the oxygen we'd lose in the airlock to throw him out. Bullets are cheaper."

Jack glanced up. Lisa and Ianto sat outside the range of the camera on purpose. Lisa's face at this moment was why. She was lousy at poker. Which made strip poker that much more entertaining, but it was time to focus just now.

"That's not in your regulations. Rules say he gets a trial."

"You interfered the last time I put one of yours on trial."

"So I did."

"In the old days, they hanged spies and traitors. I'm sure you'll weasel your way out, and even if you don't, we both know you'd walk away from it regardless. But since we already know he's guilty, it doesn't seem worth the return trip and the cost of a legal case."

"I can see where you're coming from. And you're right. Spies are often executed." He spun the screen, so the Colonel could see where Bridget had been cuffed to her leather chair. "Trade you."

He spun the screen back. The Colonel scowled. "How long have you known?"

"Long enough. Assume anything she's ever given you has been what we wanted you to see."

"Understood. Feel free to shoot her."

Bridget squawked in protest and Dev smacked her on the arm. "Hush."

"Dr. McLaren is a liability. Shoot her, don't shoot her. We don't need her anymore."

"Hear that, Bridge? Suddenly the Torchwood retirement plan is looking pretty sweet, hm?"

"Colonel!" Bridget said.

Jack waved at Devorah. "Roll her outta here and keep an eye on her." Dev pushed the rolling chair in front of her out the door. Beth covered a giggle.

The Colonel said, "If that's all you've got, I'm disappointed."

Jack hid his smile. That had just tipped the other man's hand in a big way. He was willing to deal. "It's not, actually. Ianto?"

Ianto joined him in front of the camera. "Colonel."

"Colonel, I believe you know my handsome husband? He's in charge of our archives, which means he files all the reports, crosschecks all our artefacts, and so on. He came on after our first base was destroyed, and helped put together all that we could scavenge from the old archive, including what survived Canary Wharf. We also maintain all the backup records from our Glasgow office, and the new London office. So basically, if Torchwood touched it in the last hundred-odd years, and it was backed up, dug out, or otherwise recovered since our last disaster, he's handled it. Is that about right, Ianto?"

"Sounds right." Ianto handed Jack the stick.

"This memory stick has a copy of every record we've got. Every alien, every piece of tech, including the stuff I've personally added to the files from memory."

Ianto said, "It includes a list of every item we have, along with their origins, properties, approximate monetary value, potential applications, and so on." He'd spent a lifetime building this database. The last two years, he'd collected everything together for this one project. Plan F, or whatever they were on now.

Jack set the stick down. "Everything you've ever wanted from us. No strings, and only one condition."

The Colonel leaned forward towards his screen. Jack could see the wheels in his head turning. He was going to be in trouble for the mission, but he could salvage a lot of this mess by presenting the entirety of Torchwood to the current head of UNIT.

"And," Jack said, as Ianto moved back beside Lisa and took her hand, "one last offer to sweeten the deal. We get Kyle. You get all the information we've collected since we were founded. And I step down as the head of Torchwood."

He didn't look at the tight faces around him, not now.

The Colonel looked at him. "You're right. That's a very sweet deal." Jack smiled. "But I think once the dust settles, your little club is going to be disbanded anyway, and all your records will still come to us. And I'd rather see your face at his funeral." Jack felt the old fears slam into him, remembered too many funerals, remembered why he was here, why Kyle was even born. Without meaning to, he fingered the leather at his wrist, and cursed himself for the tell. "Yes. I think it'll look much like that."

The Colonel pressed a button. "Execute Lt. Jones."

Jack jumped from his chair. "You're making a mistake. You're throwing away a perfect opportunity for the sake of a little revenge."

"I think my superiors will understand. I'm choosing to save us time and expense. In fact, I … "

There was a click of a safety, and a gun was placed against the Colonel's head. Jack couldn't see anything but the hand holding it, but he knew the voice.

"My Mum always said the thing about choices is that you only get to make them once."

* * *

**Interlude: Five Minutes Ago, or How to Give Someone an Opportunity to Make New Friendships That Will Last a Lifetime**

* * *

Tony'd meant to go earlier, but there was work to do here, a few last documents to sign, proverbial fires to put out, and while he wasn't going to be around later to deal with the fallout, he genuinely liked the people he worked with, and didn't intend to leave them a bigger mess. He'd stayed, and told some easy jokes to get Spitz laughing, and brought a stack of files up to the Colonel's secretary, and he'd said his goodbyes in his head.

But all his mental goodbyes kept going back to other people.

"Goodbye. I'm sorry," he sent to Jenkins, but all he could think about was Rose.

"Goodbye. I liked you, and I'm going to miss you," he thought to Spitz, but he saw John.

"Goodbye. Goodbye."

He needed to write a note. He'd send it to Kyle. Yes. Something quick, because time was wasting. He pulled out the notebook he kept, the one he'd been making notes in all this time, and swiped a pencil from Jenkins' cup. He could drop it in the internal mail, let it arrive on Kyle's desk, or in his cell, in a few days. Hell of a way to say goodbye to someone, but better than nothing.

Tony grabbed a chair in the empty canteen, and started to write. Three words in, he knew he was writing the wrong letter. He tore off the page, stuffed it in his pocket, and started fresh.

When the commotion started, he shoved the notebook in the same pocket as Mickey's letters, the one that held the dimensional transporter. As he hurried, he passed multiple screens, all of them showing Kyle talking to the K'kltic, and Tony smiled warmly, listening as he ran.

He reached Jenkins' desk. Jenkins was stepping out of the Colonel's office. "Did you see?" he asked Tony.

"Everybody saw. The General needs you in his office right now to coordinate a press release. I was sent to get you. Something's up with the phones."

Jenkins nodded. "Thanks." Tony followed him out, then looped around and back into the outer office. Jenkins was a good man, and he didn't deserve to be caught up in this.

Tony went to open the Colonel's door. "Stop right there."

Tony froze. He turned slowly. Harmon had his weapon trained on him.

"I was checking to see if the Colonel had been informed of the new development," Tony said.

"Your boyfriend just broke orders and destroyed our first contact."

"And I was gonna go tell the Colonel about it."

"I liked you," said Harmon. "You're good at making people like you, Tyler. How long have you been planning this?"

"I don't make plans. I follow orders, same as you." He took stock. Harmon was armed, he wasn't. First order of business: change one of those two items. Second, the screens with Kyle and the aliens on them had gone dead a minute or so ago, which meant the feed was gone, or had been cut, and either way, Kyle was no longer in the public eye. He heard a phone ring in the Colonel's office.

"You take orders from Torchwood?"

"Worked for them all my life. Where I'm from, my dad ran Torchwood for years. Pretty sure he's stepped down now. My sister's probably running the place."

"That doesn't make any … " Tony bolted, hit him headfirst in the stomach, and they rolled.

Harmon still had a grip on the gun. Tony dug his thumbs into the pressure points on Harmon's wrists as Harmon twisted under him, swearing. Harmon pulled up his knee hard into Tony's groin, taking the air out of his lungs as pain shot through his whole body. Harmon shoved him off and rolled to his feet.

"You fucking fairy," he said, and Tony's legs shoved out into his knees. Harmon fell again, and he dropped the gun. Tony put a knee on his chest, tears still streaming in his eyes. Harmon brought a fist up, and Tony blocked it, barely, didn't manage to block the other. They rolled again, and Harmon got in another punch. He was on top of Tony, would happily beat him senseless now, and Tony raised one arm to defend himself. With the other, Tony dug into his own pocket, grabbed everything, and shoved the papers into Harmon's shirt.

"What the fuck?" Harmon said, scrabbling in confusion. The distraction was all Tony needed to wrangle the lanyard over Harmon's neck.

"Bye," said Tony, and he slammed his palm against the activator, pushing Harmon hard as he did.

Harmon vanished.

For a few precious seconds, Tony lay there on the floor, balls aching, head pounding. At best guess, the systems at home would pick up the distortion in the dimensional field, and Torchwood would pay a swift visit to the UNIT facility on his world. Within an hour, Harmon would be debriefed, and when they found the letters, whoever was in charge of the operation would call Rose. Hell, she might even eventually ship him back. Home had the tech.

Tony got to his feet, and he grabbed Harmon's gun. And because John had helped raise him, he pulled out the clip and stowed it in his pocket. He went to the Colonel's door. As he opened it as quietly as he could, he heard: "I'd rather see your face at his funeral." The Colonel was intent on his screen.

Tony sighed. The thing about Jack, John had told him once, was that he was great at making and following plans up to a point, but he rarely stuck the landing. Something always went wrong at the end, and someone else had to come along and tidy up the mess.

Tony went inside.


	9. Tasting Much Sweeter Than Wine

**Chapter 9: Tasting Much Sweeter Than Wine**

* * *

Lisa went to stand in front of the monitor with Jack. Ianto came around the other side. The Colonel's attention had gone from them to the man off-screen.

"You're making a bad choice," Tony said. "You'd like to get in a dig at Jack for having conned you on this, but the thing about revenge is that it comes around fast. I promise you won't live to gloat about it."

"Lieutenant, you will stand down."

"I really won't."

"Harkness, this is a new low for you."

Jack held up his hands. "Tyler was supposed to be in another universe by now."

The Colonel frowned in confusion.

Tony said, "We don't have time for explanations, but you should know this, sir. I've spent my life hearing about the blindingly stupid things people in my family have done for love. It's a lot to live up to. My sister blasted a hole through the walls between universes because she couldn't stand the thought of losing the man she loved." He leaned in, intimate in the Colonel's ear. "Me, I'm just gonna blow your head off. Give the order."

"I think we know his angle now," Ianto whispered. Jack shushed him, but a smile teased at his lips. As grand romantic gestures went, this was certainly better than another bloody dinosaur, Lisa thought.

"This is your career," the Colonel said.

"Do it now."

"You'll be in prison for the rest of your life."

"I don't care. Three. Two."

The Colonel pressed a button on his desk. "Lt. Trevor, belay that order. Lt. Jones," he glanced at Tony again, but the gun hadn't wavered, "is not to be harmed."

Lisa felt as though she hadn't breathed in years. The sudden rush of air in her lungs made her woozy. Jack's arm snaked out and held her by the waist. She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Sir?" came a voice from the screen.

"I said, belay the order. Where is Jones?"

"Sir … " The voice was nervous. The air was gone again. They were too late. She felt Jack stiffen, could not see Ianto's face where she stood and she reached out to touch him.

"Did you already carry out the order?" The Colonel himself sounded dead, as if he knew it could be the last thing he ever said.

"Colonel," came another voice on the line. "It's Dr. Leeson. There was a problem with the translation."

"I didn't ask about the translation."

"Sir, I take full responsibility," she said. "I insulted the K'kltic ambassador."

"Dammit," Jack said, very quietly. He turned to Callie, and in an equally low voice, he said, "Call your sister."

Lisa watched Gwen cover her face as Callie pulled out her phone.

"What's the situation?" asked the Colonel. He sounded calm for a man who still had a gun at his temple, and not for the first time, Lisa wondered how things would have gone had they been able to work together on this.

"Stable," said Leeson. "Lt. Jones explained to them what happened. They're … amused. They're not happy with us for lying to them, but Jones promised that wouldn't happen again. Sir, it's possible he just saved us from a very bad situation."

"He did," said Jack, but too softly for them to hear.

"Where is he?" asked the Colonel.

"In custody. When you gave the order, well, we were up here. We saw what happened, and we thought you should know. Sir."

"Lt. Trevor, you didn't follow my order?"

"No, sir," said the voice that had spoken before. "I'm in trouble, aren't I, sir?"

"I can safely say, not nearly as much as I would be if you had. Put Jones on the line."

A minute passed, in which Callie was still trying to get through to Isabelle. Now it was to tell her good news, but there was no answer. Callie went out to try for a better signal.

Finally, after far too long, the line came back. "Say something," said Trevor.

"About what?" said Kyle, millions of miles away, and wonderfully alive. Her beautiful boy. Beside her, she felt the thrill run through her husbands like electricity.

Tony dropped the gun. At the very edge of the screen, Lisa saw him draw his hand to his mouth, though whether to cover a laugh or a cry, she never knew. The Colonel pressed another button on his desk.

"Lieutenant, you will be returned to Earth in custody. You are going to stand trial. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. Question, sir?"

"By all means."

"Why am I not dead right now, sir? I'm not lodging a complaint, but I was told you gave the order." His voice was calm. As a child, long before this mess started, he was quiet, and easy-going, and he sounded no more concerned than if he'd asked to go outside and play, and she loved him so much.

"Lt. Tyler disagreed with my orders. In fact," he said, as a noise was heard in the background, and armed soldiers came in, surrounding Tony, who put his hands on his head and went to his knees, "the Lieutenant will likely be spending a great deal of time in a UNIT cell of his own." He nodded to the guards. "Take him."

"Oh," said Kyle. Then louder, he said, "TONY? WHAT THE HELL?"

"Busy now," Tony called over his shoulder as he was manhandled away. "Off to gaol. See you in fifteen to twenty years?"

"It's a date."

The transmission cut off from the station.

The Colonel looked at his screen again, and said to Jack. "I believe you were going to resign?"

* * *

After the fourth attempt, Callie went back inside. Uncle Jack was shutting down the monitor.

"Tell me we still have good news," she said.

"Apocalypse averted, Kyle's coming back to Earth in one piece. Oh, and apparently he and Tony are seeing each other."

She nodded. Isabelle had said she thought they might be.

Mama said, "Did you get through?"

"She's not picking up."

Uncle Jack dialled her from the speakerphone. After five rings, Isabelle answered, "WHAT?"

"What are you doing?"

"Dancin' with Eddie Williams at the end of the world."

"You're supposed to answer your phone," said Mama.

"I did. How's Kyle?"

Uncle Jack said, "Coming home. And everything went according to plan."

"Fab. Can we do it now?"

"Please," said Uncle Jack.

"Edward," said Auntie Gwen.

"Your mam's on the phone," said Isabelle, somewhat muted, and then Eddie said, "Hullo, Mam."

"Edward, what are you doing?"

"Isabelle says we're savin' the world. Of course, she also said that about that time we almost set the Assembly Building on fire."

Auntie Gwen sighed, and Callie felt her pain. She knew for a fact that most of the times the pair had ended up in trouble, it had resulted from one of her sister's ideas. Personally, she blamed Uncle Jack. Isabelle's cot had been in his office when she'd been tiny, and Callie occasionally suspected he'd pulled Isabelle out of it when he was bored and bounced her on her head. It would explain a lot.

"Just be home later, then," said Auntie Gwen.

"Yes, Mam."

Isabelle came back on. "So are we doin' this?"

"I said yes," said Uncle Jack, patiently. Sometimes, with Izzy, you had to.

"Oh. Hold on."

* * *

Eddie stood back. Isabelle had set up the machine in the middle of the field. As he watched, a manic gleam filled her eyes, and she smacked both fists into the activation button.

A moment later, a beam shot out of the machine, and what looked like fireworks exploded in the sky, sparkling down on them in all the colours of the rainbow.

Isabelle grinned.

* * *

"Signal's up," said Callie. She stood. "I'm off. We'll meet you at the site, yeah?"

"Yeah," said Lisa, and Callie bent to kiss her cheek.

Jack watched her go. Something tickled at the back of his head, but he couldn't figure out what. He turned to Gwen. "Officially, I'll be handing the reins over to you as soon as possible, but you'll want me to be the one they're yelling at so I'm going to stay in a figurehead role at least until … "

Lisa stood, concern on her face. "Where'd Ianto go?"

The tickled threatened to bloom into full-fledged panic, which Jack pushed down fast. "He stepped out a few minutes ago." But a few stretched out suddenly into over ten.

"Yeah, to get a file from his desk." She pushed out of the room, and Jack followed her. He wasn't at his desk. Dev, sitting with Bridget in the med bay, hadn't seen him.

"Maybe he went for coffee," said Lisa, and went to the outer office where they kept the machine to ask Beth.

Jack closed his eyes. The thread of panic was still there, and he followed it into his office. Ianto was slumped over on the sofa.

"Hey," said Jack, his voice brittle and bright as he fell to his knees beside the far too still figure. "No sleeping on the job. Okay? Ianto?"

His hands were already on Ianto's face, checking for breath, for pulse. A thready throb reached his fingertips, and Jack let out a shaky breath. "Ianto, c'mon. Please."

Ianto's eyes cracked open. "Sorry," he said, and Jack could see him try to lift his head. He put a firm hand there to help, but Ianto was deadweight. No, don't use that word.

"How bad?"

"I'm fine. Just tired." He closed his eyes again.

"Don't do that." His door was still open. "Lisa! In here!"

"Really," Ianto said, out of breath. "It's been a good day. Just a bit," he took a shallow breath, "overtaxing. Need a rest."

Lisa bolted through the door, and was beside them. "How are you, love?" She looked at Jack. "Bridget is right outside."

"In custody."

"Jack."

"Hold him." He gently transferred Ianto's head to Lisa. She stroked his hair as Jack hurried to the med bay, his handcuff key already out.

He held it out of Bridget's reach as he watched her. "Want to earn your job back?

* * *

Kyle had nothing to do for the rest of the trip. He'd helped set up everything when they'd arrived, which meant more work as the team felt obligated -- and was then ordered -- to go back over everything he'd touched to make certain he hadn't committed sabotage. He hadn't, but no-one believed him.

So he sat, watching the stars, and trying to stay professional when Dr. Leeson and her colleague Dr. Marsh consulted him for help with translations. In the very back of his mind, he felt the continued amusement from the members of the K'kltic party until they finally went too far out of range on their way to Earth. By the time the UNIT team was packing up to leave, he knew the K'kltic would be beginning their first talks down on the planet, in front of everyone as they'd wished. He was no longer allowed communication with or news from Earth, but he was sure.

The stars were pretty. He could see so many more of them up here, and he counted as they made their way, much more slowly than their alien friends, back to the planet. He wanted to tell Isabelle, when he saw her again.

He ate, slept, and used the zero-g toilet facilities under guard. He spoke little to the rest of the team, but answered questions when asked, and he was mostly left alone except for the whole "constantly monitored" thing. Kyle found it all oddly restful.

Part of him expected that this was temporary. He'd outlived his usefulness to both organisations, and while he didn't doubt he was loved on the Torchwood side, he'd spent all his goodwill on the UNIT side just to keep from getting shot back on the space station. But he'd caused them embarrassment, and frankly, it was a matter of time until someone decided he was worth more dead than alive, and someone else agreed. If he was going to die, then he was already dead, it was all fixed, and he didn't have to worry. The rest of him thought he might get out of prison before he turned thirty, and he'd have some decisions to make about his life then, but since that future was nebulous and nowhere near now, he didn't have to worry about it, either.

When the shuttle landed, he was escorted, again under guard, back to base. He'd expected the holding facility out in the middle of nowhere, though he supposed someone was enjoying him being walked to a cell in front of people he knew.

"We're not supposed to talk to you," said Spitz, falling in step beside him briefly. Trevor and Baker pretended to be interested in the walls. Singh just rolled his eyes and kept walking.

"Then you probably shouldn't," Kyle said.

"Just wanted to let you know, word is your old man's in hospital. Other word is he's going to be okay."

"Thanks." He gave Spitz a nod, and Spitz fell out of step again and wandered quickly away.

They led him to the holding area. He'd dressed and undressed under watch for the past three days, but he was patted down and examined again, and shown the door of his cell before his cuffs were released. "You will be debriefed in two hours. Legal counsel will be provided after that time."

The door was opened, and Kyle stepped inside. It was dark, only a small window fifteen feet up to light it during the day, and a CFL at night, he would discover later. Small bunk with no blanket, a drain, and a faucet that might possibly be older than Jack, leaking into what was either a sink or a urinal and had apparently been used for both.

"I tried complaining to the concierge," came a voice, floating in through a grill near the ceiling that seemed to lead to the next cell. "But he said the hotel was simply too booked to change my reservation. Would you believe the nerve? I am never staying at this chain again, and you can be sure I'll be sending a letter of complaint to the manager."

Kyle sat on his bunk, trying not to chuckle. "I've heard the hotel restaurant is good."

"Four star," Tony said, his tone still utterly serious. "It's the only reason I'm still here. You should try the filet. Pair it with the Pinot, and request the mousse for dessert. It's to die for."

"I'm considering the roughy. All the reviewers say it melts in your mouth."

"No, those are the waiters."

Kyle couldn't help the laugh that escaped him, felt it fly out of his chest like a bird, like a song, and once it had escaped, he laughed until tears rolled out of his eyes.

* * *

The General reaches out and holds his hand over a button. The Colonel sighs even before the General speaks: "Let the record show this is a playback of a recording made during Lt. Jones' debriefing upon return to Earth."

The recording zips through to where the General placed a digital stop. A voice, Lt. Colonel Wilder's, asks, "You translated everything you said in K'kltic to English except in one place."

"Yes, ma'am," says a second voice. Jones.

"Our translators are not familiar with the words the K'kltic used, nor with how you responded. We will find out what you said. Will you translate for me now?"

"Yes, ma'am. The K'kltic ambassador complimented me on my accent and thanked me. Then she asked where I had learned her language so well, as they had only sent UNIT a child's primer." He paused, and then chitted and whistled. It's the same sounds as on the damnable broadcast.

The General says, unnecessarily in the Colonel's mind, "Preliminary translations agree that this was what the K'kltic said."

Wilder: "What did you reply?"

Jones: "Ma'am, the K'kltic are a communal species, with a slight telepathic link to all other members of their kind. The highest honour a K'kltic can receive … "

Wilder: "Lieutenant, I didn't ask for a sociology lesson."

Jones: "Yes, ma'am. This is important, ma'am. You must know to whom you're speaking or you don't know what you're saying. As I said, the highest honour a K'kltic can receive is to be asked to join a, well, we'd call it a hive. K'kltic children are raised together in groups of about twenty by four or five adults. While any K'kltic can have offspring, only the very best -- we would say the keenest minds, the kindest souls, the bravest hearts -- are permitted to care for their young and raise them." There's a sudden sound, an amused noise.

Wilder: "Lieutenant?"

Jones: "Sorry, ma'am. I was going to say it would be like requiring all the parents in Great Britain to be as smart as Professor Smith, and then I remembered one time when he minded my sisters and me when we were small."

Wilder: "The translation."

Jones: "Yes, ma'am. I said," there is another series of clicks and a chitter, "which means I was taught their language by my hive-father."

Wilder: "By which you meant Captain Harkness?"

Jones: "Yes, ma'am. The Captain is reasonably fluent in K'kltic and has been teaching me their language since I was a child. There's an odd quirk translating between the two languages. The K'kltic word for hive-father is pronounced like his name." The chitter he makes afterwards sounds very much like "Chack."

Wilder: "Did Captain Harkness arrange the K'kltic's arrival on Earth?"

Jones: "Not to my knowledge, ma'am."

The General stops the playback. "You watched the debriefing as it occurred."

"Yes."

"You understand this is going to drag out for some time."

"I do."

"Were you informed that King William issued a statement to us this morning pledging to stand behind Torchwood's actions?"

Not yet, but the news is not unexpected. "I have been now, sir. Lt. Jones is not a member of Torchwood, though. He and Lt. Tyler are still our problem."

"So they are, and Tyler is going to be a separate matter. Harkness is claiming Tyler is a standing member of Torchwood from an alternate dimension, which is not the kind of jurisdictional argument anyone one wants to have."

"No, sir." They will still have him on espionage. The question is, how long will they keep him, as the same charges had barely touched Isabelle Jones.

"We will be prosecuting Jones. Violating orders, suborning the chain of command, incapacitating, however temporarily, his fellow soldiers. The lawyers are going over everything, and I'm sure we'll find more. Apparently Torchwood has been documenting the whole thing."

"Yes."

"Your trial will be running concurrently."

"Yes, sir."

"I wouldn't hazard to guess that either outcome will depend on the other. However, I am going to ask you now. While I understand the Lieutenant went to great lengths to pretend he was estranged from his family, did he ever once pretend he was not connected to them?"

He hadn't. And every document on him, every psychological exam, every test, every commendation, all of it was linked by name or implication back to Torchwood.

"No, sir."

"UNIT recruited him, you mentored and promoted him in full knowledge of who he was. You are not going to claim on the stand otherwise, in either trial. Is this correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Colonel." The General shuts off the recording. "Off the record, I think you're making a wise move. You tried to overreach, you failed. Take your punishment and don't try blaming anyone else. That should put you in the good graces of the court."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, General. Off the record, I understand how the frog felt."

The General raises an eyebrow.

"As he was dying in the middle of the river. He invited the scorpion along. It had to be embarrassing. Don't you think, sir?"

* * *

**Interlude: As I Write This Letter**

* * *

_Dear Rose,_

Hope this reaches you. Tell Mum & Dad I love them. Hugs & kisses for your kids, tell them be good for me. Jack's Torchwood is a mess, and they need me here. (Jack says hi.) Take care of you, take care of John. I miss you. Love always, Tony.

Rose set it down on her desk. There was no mistaking Tony's handwriting, and even if there were, the set of letters sitting beside it, written in Mickey's hand, told her the rest. She'd taken the time to read everything addressed to her, but Mum and Dad and Jake could read their own letters from Mickey. Tony's letter looked as though he'd scrawled it in a hurry.

"Mrs. Smith?"

Rose looked up from the letters to the fresh-faced youth in front of her. Torchwood kept hiring younger and younger people, or maybe it was just that she wasn't anymore.

"All right. I'm convinced. Take me to see him."

The kid led her to the holding cell. The man inside was dressed like a UNIT soldier, but he didn't appear on any of their records, and he'd shown up right as they'd found a disturbance in the space-time fabric, wearing a device that was extremely familiar.

"Where am I?"

Rose ignored his question. "You ever hear of a man called the Doctor?"

He scoffed. "I'm UNIT. Of course I've heard of him. Most famous alien we've ever dealt with."

"Is he still alive?"

"Yes. I suppose. Not my thing to know."

"Do you know a man named Jack Harkness?"

The man scowled. "I knew it. Bloody Torchwood. Fucking Jones ruined our first contact, and Harkness will take all the credit."

That sounded like her Jack. Rose said, "Captain Harkness doesn't have any say here." That seemed to put him at ease, a little. "Jones, you said?" She remembered Martha, liked her quite a bit for the little they'd interacted.

"Kyle. Harkness's kid." He made a face. Rose bit her lip, and knew John was going to laugh his arse off about this tonight.

"More on him later. For now, tell me how you came to be here, carrying letters from my ex-boyfriend and my little brother." She watched as his eyes widened, and she allowed herself a smile.

_PS. There's a guy. His name's Kyle. I'm happy, so don't worry, okay? -- T._


	10. Time Stand Still

**Chapter 10: Time Stand Still**

* * *

"You look fine," said Tony, brushing invisible lint from Kyle's shoulder. Kyle was unsure why everyone on the planet did this. He smoothed his hair with his hand again as Tony played with his bowtie.

"Seriously. You're like a little peacock today."

Kyle pushed him away from the bowtie and fixed it himself. "First, I'm taller than you, so shove the 'little' and second … "

Jack leaned his head into the room. "I heard the word 'cock.'"

" … that."

Tony said, "You have selective superhearing," as he stared at Jack. Kyle understood the impulse. It was unfair that everyone else felt like a penguin in these bloody tuxedos while Jack looked like, well, Jack. He'd mentioned it to Dad, who'd just shrugged.

"Come on," Jack said. "People are arriving. You need to seat them."

"No-one told me the job was also 'usher.'"

Tony said, "Just be glad she didn't make him have you be his best man. That'd be awkward."

Kyle pondered what would be worse, and decided the "have to marry Callie" jokes outweighed the "dancing with the Maid of Honour, who's got green scales and a tail" part.

"Yeah."

Tony kissed him, just a quick peck, and they hurried outside so Kyle could escort the guests to their seats. Instead of "Bride's Side" and "Groom's Side," they were divided into "Hunts Aliens for a Living" and "Alien and Alien-Friendly." Callie had settled the walking down the aisle issue with a glare and a mutter about "property transactions, really?" so all the parents were seated early. Just as well. Dad didn't need any extra activity, not after fixing the near-disaster this morning with the tuxedos.

There was a seat left open, on the "Alien" side, just in case. Fortunately, the ceremony passed without a visit from the TARDIS.

And now it was the reception, which, with the exception of the caterer, was going well. Isabelle and Kyle abandoned the bridal party table for safer ground, abetted by someone -- Tony and Eddie each pointed at the other when asked -- who'd swiped their name cards and replaced them with their cousins Ashley and Hailey. By common agreement, the bride's parents were seated at a different table than the groom's; the former table was overflowing with friends, while Michael's parents sat back in polite horror as they found they were seated with a blowfish couple and their hyperactive five year old. Also Uncle Douglas and Aunt Angie, which might possibly be worse. The band, made up of four of Michael's friends, played in the background.

Toasts were made, and the food was on the table, and everyone who was allowed to drink had a glass, and Tony's hand was warm on the small of his back as they sat close together, and Kyle had never enjoyed himself more.

"So," Eddie was saying, "we get back outside, covered in purple slime … "

"It was blue," said Isabelle, laughing. "And it smelled … "

"… like socks," they said together. Eddie continued, "And she turns to me and she says, 'The last one didn't explode like that!'"

The table erupted in laughter, earning them all stern looks from the bridal table, as well as the parent tables. Isabelle drained the last of the beer in her glass.

Eddie said simply, "That's one."

Jeanie looked bored as her brother launched into another story. Mindy turned to Tony. "So Eddie tells me you're the reason they had to postpone this for so long."

"Not my fault," said Tony. "I'd have been happy to send a gift." His smile was easy, though, despite having served eighteen months; the murder charge had been dropped when Harmon reappeared seven months ago with a shorted-out transporter and a dozen letters from Jackie Tyler duct-taped to his shirt. Kyle's own sentence had been reduced to a year, with that whole "saving the world" thing counting heavily in his favour. "I wasn't even in the wedding," Tony complained.

"Everyone wanted you here," Kyle said. "It's a party to celebrate our all not being dead." Mum, Dad and Jack had been firm on one point with Callie. If they were paying for the wedding -- which she hadn't asked them to, she'd pointed out -- they were inviting the entire extended family. Not just Aunt Alice, Uncle Douglas, and Aunt Rhi, but every person who'd made today possible. Unfortunately, it meant Uncle Jonny was over at his own table complaining about the government to poor Clyde.

"I wasn't dead in prison."

Mindy laughed.

Clearly also getting bored with the story Eddie was telling, Isabelle turned to the bloke sitting next to her. "So you're Michael's friend, yeah?"

"Yeah. We went to school together. Never thought he'd end up married, you know?"

"I know." She held out her hand. "Isabelle, Callie's sister."

"Bruce."

Isabelle grinned

"Two," Eddie said, as the waiter brought them more drinks.

Tony said, "Here's to enormous weddings. May we never have them."

"Hear, hear," said Isabelle, and there was a general clink of glasses.

"Oh, it was a lovely wedding," said Mindy, in a tone that made Eddie's eyes bulge just a little before he took a long drink.

"Gorgeous," said Isabelle. "Mum helped Callie plan every last detail." She shared the same look of mild horror Kyle knew he wore. Mum was officially retired, and she'd been channelling her energy into assisting Callie. God alone knew how big a menace she'd be to herself once this was past. "I'm never getting married," Isabelle said, gazing around at the enormous party. "And if I do, I'm getting eloped."

"Amen," said Tony.

"That was the wrong thing to say," said Eddie quietly as Isabelle and Mindy suddenly turned bright grins on Tony and Kyle.

Isabelle said, "So when _are_ you two making it legal?"

Tony laughed, and gave Kyle a squeeze where he held him, while Kyle grabbed his glass and started drinking. "Oh, like we'd tell you lot first. One day, you'll all get a postcard from someplace tropical."

Kyle stiffened. "They will?" They hadn't really discussed the matter. Tony had moved in with Kyle the day he was released, and that had been a week ago. They'd only come up for air yesterday and they'd still been late for the rehearsal. Hearing the plan out loud made Kyle keenly curious as to what else Tony had planned, because he was liking the sound of it.

"_Really_ shouldn't have said that," Eddie said.

Tony said, "What I meant was … "

But what Tony meant, he never said, because that was the point where the Best Man announced it was time for Callie to toss the bouquet.

Mindy caught it.

From the parents' table, Kyle heard Eddie's Da laughing his arse off.

* * *

The best thing about the wedding was … Actually, Jack couldn't find anything bad about it, except the Issue With the Caterer, which Lisa was settling in to rant about for the next ten years, if he was any judge. She'd chosen a red dress today, with a matching rose in her hair, and Jack kept having to remind himself not to stare. Callie looked gorgeous, because every bride looked gorgeous on her wedding day, but at the moment, he couldn't recall seeing a more beautiful woman in all the world then the one sitting next to him making upset hand motions about the menu. Ianto sat to the other side of her, nodding sympathetically at the right times, because he also recognised a Ten Year Rant when he saw one birthed. There weren't many of them, but they were spectacular.

The table was not designed to fit fifteen people, one of them in a wheelchair, so they'd heaved a couple more over to join up. The glare this had earned from the caterer probably shaved two years off Lisa's ire, and was thus more than worth it.

Gwen and Andy were trying unsuccessfully to remember the words to a drinking song they'd learned thirty years ago. Johnson was entertaining herself (and the rest of them) by throwing in random lyrics every time they came up with something. Rhys and Mickey argued, politely, over whose team was going to win the match next weekend. Lois's husband was attempting to explain what he did for a living to Martha and Ronnie, who really didn't care.

On days like this, Jack was careful not to bump, pinch or scrape himself. If his life was a particularly detailed dream, he never wanted it to end.

Someone's phone rang. Alice, sitting across the table. Immediately, the volume of conversations went down, except from Fred, who was telling Ronnie about stocks. Alice got up and walked away, talking in a low voice. Jack made an effort not to follow her.

"You're worse than a child," Ianto said.

Alice came back to expectant eyes. "What?" Jack almost jumped out of his skin, and she said, "That was our next-door-neighbour. The cat got out."

"I told you," said Johnson.

Mild disappointment moved through the table, and then the conversations resumed. Callie was going to start dancing with Michael any minute, and the dancing was always Jack's favourite part. Callie said she'd found a nice, slow song to dance with her father, which was for the best as Ianto had refused to bring the oxygen with him today. They'd have an early night of it, leaving right after the bride and groom, stay at the hotel, make the drive back home tomorrow, and rest for the next few days.

Jack had told Callie yesterday at the rehearsal that if she and Michael were considering children, if she wanted her father to meet them, sooner would be better than later.

But today was a good day. His friends were here, and almost all the people he loved, and for once, instead of jumping into every conversation with anecdotes and jokes, Jack was happy to sit back and watch them, and listen, and try to engrave this day on his memory so he could take it out again a thousand years from now, wondering at the beauty. He glanced over to the bridal party, where Callie was grinning ear to ear at something her maid of honour was telling her, Michael a calm presence beside her. Another table, and the rest of the kids were chatting, something about Isabelle claiming that Tony needed to join the family so they could have a "cool brother" for once, and she was clearly including Eddie as an honorary uncool brother as he and Kyle were both offended.

The humming whirr sounded just at the edge of his hearing, but he noticed Martha's head turn sharply, saw Mickey twitch. They both looked at him, which drew Ianto's attention, and Lisa grew quiet, caterer forgotten. The others kept talking.

"Excuse me," Jack said. "That'll be for me." It was nothing, it would be nothing, it was all going to be fine, and still Jack paused, kissed his wife, kissed his husband, felt with every step away from them and out of the hall that they were vanishing behind him, never to be seen again. The music was quieter out here, like a radio tuned to a distant station, like a timeline that never was.

The TARDIS was parked at the top of a small hill, outlined against the afternoon sky and haloed in wispy clouds. The Doctor walked towards him, hands in his pockets, face drawn in an expression that could be sorrow, and could be anger banked and ready to blaze. Jack was never sure with this particular Doctor, the fourth he'd known.

"What have you done?"

A quip came to mind, something about the wedding, the party, and he dropped it as soon as he thought about saying it. "We saw a problem coming. We fixed it."

"You don't get to decide that." The Doctor rubbed his face with his hand. For all his age, Jack knew the Doctor saw him as hardly more than a wayward child, the awkward, somewhat rebellious son who'd do anything for attention and affection. "You and I both have a responsibility not to stick our thumbs on the scales of history because we think it might suit us better." Another shadow crossed his face. "Jack, I've been there. You can't pick and choose the future."

Jack looked back, let himself take in the faces he could see through the window. Alice checked her phone again, as Lois chatted with Toshiko. Isabelle had grabbed the mic from the lead singer of the band, and was asking where she could find a woman like that, while Eddie Williams patted the back of one of Michael's friends and mouthed something that looked like, "Good luck, mate."

For a moment, Jack saw two different rooms overlapping each other, one with his family celebrating Callie's wedding, the other burnt out and empty, echoing of war and gunshots and disease and the clank of metal feet, and oh God, Steven's face was covered with blood …

"Steven couldn't make it to the wedding," Jack said, clinging to his sanity as best he could. "Mary can't travel right now, with the baby due any day." He looked at the Doctor. "They're having a little girl. Alice wants them to name her Lucy, but I still get a little weird about that name."

"Jack."

"Mary wants to name her Gayle."

"Jack."

"It was the right thing to do. If you know someone could drown, you don't stand there and watch."

"Even if letting that one person drown means potentially allowing millions more to live?" The Doctor looked at him, and Jack felt wide open, as though the Doctor were reading the scars on his soul of every single time Jack had made exactly that decision. And there was no answer, save that Jack had done that before, yes, and because of it, he had to do this now. "Even if they drown anyway?"

As the Doctor said the words, Jack knew it was true. He read the news, and he knew what wasn't being written. The same factors that started the conflicts before were still true: too many people, not enough resources, old grudges. They'd prevented the first war, but the others, the intertwined localised conflicts that marked the middle of twenty-first century? Those still lurked on the horizon, if just farther out than before. Pushing them back again would require far more work, which the Doctor would not, could not let him attempt.

He'd bet everything on one hand, but the House always won in the end. The only question remaining was when he had to pay out.

"If you're going to change it back, do it now. I don't want to wonder if I'm going to wake up one morning, and be the only one who remembers my kids. They're all happy right now. If you're going to take them from me, please … "

_A nightmare, repeated on far too many dark evenings: He's back in Cardiff, the Plass is a wreck, and every day is like walking over glass as they rebuild. There's a small grave in London, and an empty one in Newport, and Alice swears she will kill him over and over if he ever speaks to her again. Gwen's child grows up, but Jack is the only one who remembers trying to tame Isabelle's hair into a ponytail for school. He visits the ice cream shop where Callie would beg for praline crunch, but the shop owner has never seen her dark eyes light up at the sight of a cone. Jack works, and he fights, and sometimes he hears Lisa's soft laugh just out of sight, sees a little boy who looks exactly like Kyle being swept up into Ianto's arms for a hug but when he turns, they're gone. They're all gone. And Gwen is there with her perfect life and perfect family that he gave everything to protect for her, and she asks him why he's weeping._

"Have you figured it out yet?" The Doctor's voice cut across his thoughts.

"What?"

"Why I leave. Why all of you," he glanced inside, watched Mickey and Martha as they talked with friends, "eventually leave the TARDIS, even though half of you say you want to travel with me for the rest of your lives."

Jack would have, back then. Funny what twenty centuries of perspective and a year of being tortured to death by a maniac whilst the Doctor didn't lift a finger to help him could do. "You said you left me because I was wrong."

"There's that," the Doctor said, breathing in deeply.

"You'd rather leave us first. Let us long for the good old days while we've still got some good days ahead of us. You let go before we break your hearts."

"Yep."

"It's a pretty piss-poor plan. You still miss us."

"But I don't have to watch you all die, one by one, while I keep going on." The Doctor glanced inside again. Jack could see Lisa worrying Ianto's boutonnière. "You know he doesn't have long."

The ward staff at the hospital knew them well these days, and no-one ever stopped Jack from accompanying Lisa during the hours only spouses were still allowed to visit. Ianto was on an upswing, hadn't had a serious problem in almost two months, but Jack knew their remaining time together wasn't measured in decades, or if he was honest with himself, years.

"Yeah."

"And in comparison to you, she's hardly got longer. As for your children, your grandchildren, all of them, you know there will be a day when you're the only person alive who'll remember they ever lived. And you'll just go on. No more resets. No more rolling back a bad year, or making a call at the right time to keep someone out of danger. Just you, alone, for billions of years."

Not an old radio, he thought, an old recording. Listening to songs and voices grooved deep in vinyl, or wax cylinders, something captured from a time that didn't exist anymore.

"When you put it that way ... " said Jack, as if he hadn't had these same fears so many times before, as if he didn't know how precious every second already was, nor how the only thing worse than remembering them forever would be forgetting.

"There is nothing I can possibly do to punish you that you are not already doing to yourself, every day you're here." He turned to Jack, and his eyes were old. "For creating a timeline where they lived, for attempting to create one where they don't perish in the wars to come, your sentence is to stay and watch them die all over again, and not be able to change a hair of it. And I'm sorry."

The music changed. Something sweet and soft, and Ianto would be holding Callie's hands as they danced, the rhythm of the music counting down the seconds of their lives. "So'm I."

* * *

**Epilogue: For a Million Years**

* * *

His dance with Callie ended, and he should have gone back to sit, but Lisa was out on the dance floor with Kyle, because Jack still hadn't returned (_might never return, don't think that way, he always comes back, he promised_). Ianto cut in, although before Kyle could escape, Tony was beside him with a grin, and the music was just right.

"Don't stare," Lisa said into his ear as they danced.

"I'm not staring. I'm observing."

"Of course, dear. But your observation is making your son nervous."

Ianto rolled his eyes and turned to look at Lisa's worried smile. Isabelle called it dancing at the end of the world, when everything that you could do was done, and everything was in someone else's hands now. Jack had said not to worry, but Ianto knew all this was a soap bubble, formed with a single phone call, and another could make it never have happened. And they'd never know. So yes, he wanted to observe, to take in every moment around him, how the lace on Callie's dress fit her wrists, how Isabelle was in the corner getting friendly with one of Michael's mates, how Kyle was all smiles and flushed cheeks.

The song ended, and Ianto didn't press his luck, instead walked with Lisa, their arms linked, back to the table. Jack stood there, holding out Ianto's chair for him.

"That was fast," Lisa said. Ianto noted Martha carefully craning her neck to see if she could spot someone out the window. And so it went.

"Not much to say," Jack said, taking his seat and grabbing his water glass. "He sends his regards, had to dash."

Mickey said, "Can't help noticin' that the world hasn't ended." His free hand played with Tosh's fingers absently.

"Not today."

Jack launched into a story, just bawdy enough to catch everyone's attention and distract anyone who might ask what the Doctor was doing there. Lisa and Ianto had a silent conversation while he did. As the story drew close to the punchline, Lisa kissed Ianto on the cheek and went to see Callie.

" … and _he_ said, 'But I thought they were supposed to be green!'" Jack's laugh was always contagious, and whatever tension might have lingered among them was gone in its wake.

Ianto let the conversation flow before leaning in to Jack and affixing him with a smile. "So what did he say?"

Jack opened his mouth, and Ianto knew whatever he said was going to be a lie. Then he closed it and looked away. "Nothing I didn't already know."

"Is it settled?" Jack nodded. "Okay." Later, Ianto could find out exactly what was said, because he didn't have the innate trust for the Doctor that Jack possessed, and he'd like to know the terms of their agreement. As he took Jack's arm, and felt the absence of something he'd assumed would always be there, he gasped, and he felt his heart race uncomfortably.

"You didn't … "

Jack placed his other hand atop Ianto's. "He's keeping it, for now," he said quietly. "To ensure my continued good behaviour. Like I said, don't worry about it." But Ianto knew he'd spend weeks just playing with the bare spot on Jack's wrist, that Lisa would likely start crying when she found out, and not have words for why.

The song changed again. After a few bars, Ianto recognised the lyrics. He flashed his eyes at Jack who was the picture of innocence. "Don't look at me. Lisa was the one who made the request. Apparently some idiot played it at your wedding."

"I'd love to ask you to dance, but I don't think I'm up to it."

"That's okay," Jack said, and wrapped an arm around him instead, humming along to the music.

Across the way, Ianto watched Lisa fuss at their daughter in that way she had, her eyes bright with the tears she'd shed as soon as Callie and Michael made their getaway. They'd have to make their own departure soon after, say too many goodbyes. Ianto knew he couldn't stay much longer, none of them would, but he thought, as Jack whispered into his hair, perhaps he might -- they might all -- stay for just long enough.

Alice's phone rang.

* * *

The End

* * *

Music Cues for the Curious:

Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield  
A Taste of Honey by the Beatles  
PS I Love You by the Beatles  
Time Stand Still by Rush  
Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye by the Casinos


End file.
